Eleventh Hour
by girl with all the violets
Summary: Grissom and Sara work on case and Sara realises that she needs to go back to the past... Warning: at the start strong theme of abuse...dark...final chapter of 'junk' x
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I don't any of the characters from CSI, just the ones I make up.

**Warning: **Story centred around child abuse and is inspired by some actual events that happened in America, the U.K. and Ireland to hundreds of girls, boys and women.

**Story Spoilers:** The main character I use is Sara Sidle. This story starts at a crimescene and as Sara goes through the house collecting evidence and stuff, you learn about her childhood and teenage years which will be told from her POV. Major on the angst, I will have never written one this bad and probably won't again...put it that way lol...

_**Thank you in advance**_ to anyone who reads this story and please take the time to let me know what you think. I really don't want to give up on this story so please leave reviews because they are so appreciated! Any ideas are also appreciated, though I do have a general idea of where I am going, I will always consider doing things a different way.

**A/N:** All I have done to this chapter is changed the formating slightly because **house-of-insanity **left a comment saying it was a bit weird so I changed it.

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They stood outside of a suburban house, with its typical, artificial white picket fence and planted cornflowers in symmetrical places. It was modern house with no cobwebs and stories. The moon was snagged up in the sky, closed around with darkness. It made the moon seem brighter and regularly glistened making the grass grey for a blink. It was a sweet darkness. There was a central tree which broke Sara's heart with its giant arms stretching out and the great sweeps of leaves and in the soft glowing it had against the starry night. She was sure it would have a rough surface that she would love to stroke, to sweep her hand down from the crown of the tree, across all the great sprawling branches, right down to the craggy base with its erupted roots. Sara turned her head, stirring her hair, watching it swirl back and forth tickling her cheeks. It was thick and shining. For some reason she had let her shower water beat it down for over an hour tonight.

"It's like auntie Em's farmhouse, minus the farm."

Gil looked at her as she spoke. She had a beautiful voice and not one syllable was lost. She had made art from her simple speech. So why did he snap?

"That's an observation I have never heard, Sara," his voice stirred the air, "and it's also a non-professional one. This is a crime scene, act like it's one."

The expression on his face was so wrathful. He bit on to the last four words as he spat out the venom and Gil didn't even know why he did it, he was so level, so cold. Sara picked up her metal case and sniffed, he matched her movements, only a second out of time. Together they looked at Brass come out of the house, dazed and marvelling.

"I'm sorry, Sir,"

She hadn't called him 'sir' in a long time, and they both knew it. They both knew if Greg had cracked that remark Grissom may have even smiled. There was a glimmer of tears in her eyes and it startled her. She quickly ran her fingers through her mussed hair and rubbed her face, which was still smooth.

"Hey, Sara. Gil. The scene is secure-," Sara lifted herself under the tape.

They were the three words she needed more than any others. She gracefully looked at Brass, piercing his iris with her own rich brown orbs. He sent her a soft smile. The two men watch her step up to the doorway and place her kit down. Her beauty made Gil weep.

"I hope that thunderstorm isn't contagious."

Brass suddenly realised he didn't know who he was directing his comment at, whether it was joke between him and Gil about Sara or whether it was a statement of Gil's fantastic angry and swirling mood. Perhaps it was a combination. Gil was more the thunder and clouds and Sara was the delicate rain.

"So what's the situation?"

"Got a phone call from a woman telling us that she killed her husband. She is at PD."

"Do you know why she did it?"

"No, she hasn't spoken a word. I am going to talk to the neighbours. See if I can find out anything about the couple's lifestyle until Sofia gets here."

"You're not the preliminary?"

"Not on this case. I was closer to here than Sofia. She is stuck in traffic."

Gil sighed, the cool air slipping off his bottom lip. He was aware of the two incredible woman and there 'differences'. A few months ago, Sofia had called Sara out to a phone booth. He had both women in his office, complaining and bitching about each other. Sara had gone silently insane that Sofia could have contaminated her crime scene and implied she needed help. Sofia felt Sara's behaviour for lying and then being late was inappropriate. And before that Sara had found Sofia in his office when she was to be on leave. Professionally dealt with but he didn't want to see Sara's pupils gorge in to him for another lifetime.

He looked at Sara. A little evil crept in to Sara's head, as she consciously was aware of him watching her. She peeled out something to clip her hair up. She brushed her hair back with her hands firmly away from her forehead and behind her neck. She snapped on a slick, thick and white glove on her left hand and then reached up with her right, touching her hair, making sure it was secure. She stepped through doorway. Inside was very grand, with no light the walls seemed dusty gold, but they were probably just magnolia. It had high doorways and she could smell wax and copper. She glanced left to right as the details caught her. She clicked her small torch and swung it side to side. Photographs hung on the wall and washed-out paintings of beach scenes that looked as though they had been stolen from a hotel. She felt overwhelm or spellbound. Some warmness developed at the base of her spine.

"Hey," his voice hushed and quiet and thick.

He placed himself exactly behind her, so nobody could see his hand. He hadn't wanted to jolt her, but she looked so intense staring at… well he didn't know, but it was freakish and confusing. He awakened her from her trance and it was rather like setting off a burglar alarm as she jumped as his touch. She felt him pull away his hand and leaned back in to it slightly, feeling the blood in her spine slightly. His hand lingered for a second more and dropped down by his side. Sara's eyes glassed over, as if she had lost something precious. Together they walked through the hallway.

"Check this out." Sara said, looking at Gil.

Several glass frames was shattered on both sides of the wall. She tugged with her tweezers a large piece of glass away from the frame. It had a red stain.

"Sign of a struggle? Could you test that please?" Grissom swabbed the piece of glass. The tip turned purple.

"Blood."

They moved in to the kitchen and it was cold and quiet and empty. Gil greeted David and moved towards the body. Sara hovered slightly. A male, mid-thirties, lay in a pool of blood with large butcher knife next to him. Blood had poured and gushed from this man and had seeped out of the battered case of skin, it had drained out of him everywhere. It was a sprawling body, with gangly arms and flowing, sleek, yellow hair. There was blood smears on the plastic and once tender skin. His face was swollen slightly. His blue eyes stared up as if he could see through the roof. The mouth was a perfect of oval, like he had frozen while feeling pure amazement. Blood has once flowed down in rivulets out of his nostrils past his mouth and chin.

"I have counted four stab wounds, including the one in the neck. There is also a fresh cut right palm."

"This wound wasn't made with a knife." Grissom pointed at the victim's neck. It was a puncture wound.

"Ice pick maybe?" David suggested. Sara picked up a long and silver cooking skewer and put it into a plastic tube. She looked to her right and the pale wall had a blood smear.

"Grissom?" He looked up at her. The grey hairs at his temple drove her crazy and the sunburnt tan of his skin was wonderful. Heavy and valiant blue eyes.

"There is more blood here."

"Okay." he answered, not elaborating. Her sigh was interrupted.

"Swab it and can you find out where the fight started? Start upstairs and work your way down."

"Yeah," She heard him ask what the time of death was but was to far gone to hear David's answer.

Sara stepped in to another magnolia stained room. She hated the colour. The room was small and smelt different. It was delicious and it was like a combination of butterscotch and chocolate but with a sense of caramel and sweet, sticky fruit. There was gasoline too, hot tar and bluebells. It was tantalising, as if all the smells had been compressed and this was the outcome. It couldn't be compared to anything else in the world and she took a deep breath of it and found it tasted of nothing. The light from the street lamp filtered through the soft net curtain making the room turn slightly pink in the corners. A rug embraced the floor, plum coloured and dotted with several wind-up toys. The paintings were different, dense murky murals with scenes of long winding roads and lots of grass. Something changed in the series, in one a girl fed the ducks and in another the girl had been replaced with a sugar mill. There was a camp bed and there was a large cover, wickedly rich looking, as it was amber and blue striped. The pillowcase, however, deglamourised it, baby pink with hand-sewn flowers laced around the edges.

She slumped down like a sack of potatoes but she worked slow and savage like a brilliant Neanderthal had slumbered in to her body. She lifted hairs from the blanket, one set was brown and the other was blonde. The father was blonde. She turned off the light and pushed up her orange shades all the way to the bridge of her nose. She snaked her purple light over the soft bedcovers. Semen…and urine. She let out a long, raw, uneasy breath.The lighting changed again and she cut squares of the material that was stained with the human fluid. Something was off here.

She looked under the bed. She pushed the bed, noticing the imprints in the carpet. It was a dirty pink mantle, which must have belonged to a child. She photographed the blanket before unwrapping it. It was a diary with a flower montage decorating the front. She stroked the yellow and white roses. She picked up the book by its front cover and clumsily papers fell out. She cursed under her breath. She unfolded a sheet of paper. It was a drawing, rough rude lines and dark colours, browns and oranges mostly, and Sara assumed it was done by a girl because it had flowers and a girl was at the centre holding hands with a woman and man who was scribbled out in violent scratches of black crayon. She opened another one. It was darker in quality: a shark with large triangle teeth and ghost in the far corner. She thought it was a ghost but it had a large circular mouth. There was another girl, her hands above her head, hands but no fingers, but a male figure with fingers gripping the child. Again the male's mouth was oval shaped and his eyes were deep black holes. The child had a straight mouth with crosses for eyes. There were several more sharks and large male figures.

_"Sara, can you draw me your Daddy? Can you draw me what your Daddy does?"_

_"I want my mommy."_

She sunk in to sadness again and she began collecting the rest of the drawings when her hand touched something hard, like card. She flipped it over and there was the large tree from outside. Again the male figure was scribbled out but there was woman with her arms around a child. The woman was smiling, blonde with natural waves, aged skin and brown eyes, wearing a long sleeved turtleneck and the side of her head was tinged with black and blue, starting at the temple and travelling down to the small cheekbone. Sara stopped, looking as if she had forgotten what to do. She stared for a long moment and Sara spoke out loud to the walls.

"I bet you said you fell. Down the stairs or in to the door?"

Sara was hungry, tired and all alone. The air stood motionless around her. Her mind clicked, like wax was melting together and an ugly feeling came over her. Where is the girl in this photo? Grissom had not said anything about a daughter or niece. She thought of the drawings, the semen in the bed, a child's bed. She was jumping the evidence, but she knew this. She was about as expert in this as Grissom was with entomology


	2. Daddy's girl part 1

HELLO! I have decided to go on with this story after so many months of not knowing what to do with it... and now I do... its to do with the Sara exploring the house and going through her own childhood/teenhood... POV chapters are all by Saraand I am begging you to comment on this story...good or bad...what i can improve on... ANYTHING!

Thank you to **Nick55, MC NEW YORK** and **House-of-insanity** for reviewing and thank you **Emerson Drain, house-of-insanity , MC New York, ShipperAlert, nick55** and**shania1277** for doingthealert thingy... you guys made me smile...

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My childhood was just one long scream.

My mother, Laura, was a small and delicate woman. She was beautiful and I thought she looked like a film star. She very quiet and ladylike and was religious without being boring. She was adorable in every sense and worked day and night to keep the house in order. Her only concern was for her children and she had a lot to be concerned about.

To the outside world, my father, Oliver presented an image of respectability. He was a handsome man, well-built at fifteen stone. He dresses immaculately in a nice suit, snow-white shirt and black polished shoes that shined so much that you could use them as a mirror. He would go to mass every day. To the people around the bay, he was a high pillar of the small community. But inside out small three-bedroom home, he became a cruel and violent man who gave his family a life or mental and physical abuse.

He was always up at the crack of dawn, working from seven in the morning until six at night and I don't remember him ever missing a day's work. The B&B had been closed down when I was six but I can't remember the reason why. My brothers, Adam and Nick, and I would often help with the work. After he had finished work, he would come home to eat his dinner before heading out to the local bar.

At first when the door closed behind him, we would all feel relieved that he was gone but that was quickly replaced by the fear of what he would to us when he got home. There was no pattern to his behaviour, so we never knew what to expect. He could be alright for a while but then something would set him off and would endure weeks and months of cruelty.

He regularly beat my brothers with his belt. The buckle would cut in to their legs and the flesh wounds often turned septic. He put Adam's hands in the crack of the kitchen door and pressed it with his foot until he passed out with the pain.

One night when he was in a particularly bad mood he held my hand in pan of hot grease. The pain was unbearable. I closed my eyes and screamed so he threw me out of the kitchen and made me sit on a wooden orange box while he ate his dinner. I shook all over from the pain in my hand and I could see the skin starting to peel away. The cold made me shiver which made the pain even worse. He made me sit there for hours and would not allow my mother to let me in, even though she pleaded with him. I could hear her begging him but he just sat and ate his dinner as if nothing happened. I cried until there were no more tears. I was so lonely and so sad and my heart and body was aching and I wished I could die so he could never hurt me again.

When I was about four, one day my mother gave me a wicker box. It was sitting in the back kitchen when my father came in from work and he started shouting at me, for what I didn't know. I punched me and I fell awkwardly over the box and I felt a terrible pain in my hip. Of course, my father took no notice of cries and carried on thumping and when he was finished I was in agony and could barely walk. After a few days of this, I couldn't get out of bed and my father finally aloud for my mother to call the doctor. On seeing me, Dr Metcalfe immediately made my mother take me to hospital, where x-rays revealed that I had a hairline fracture to my hip. I was in hospital or a week and had to go about on crutches. My mother came to visit me as often as she could and my father even made it once, not to say sorry but to make a big show of saying in front of the doctors and nurses that I never looked where I was going, how I was always falling over myself. Once I got home, life continued as before.

It is very hard to describe what it is like to live in constant fear of you father. He reminded me of the horrible monster in 'Jack and the Beanstalk'. I was not only hurt physically but I also felt unwanted and humiliate, as if I was a stranger in my own home. My hurt as added to by the fact I could not understand why he was doing this to me.

He never said sorry or showed any love or affection. But I hoped that someday he would change and give me a hug and a kiss like my mother did. It never happened. I used to lie in my bed and prey that he would wake up the next morning and suddenly love me.

Even at such a young age I knew that my mother had a hard and sad life. She was a kind and caring, gentle woman whose husband gave her nothing but grief and abuse. She was so frightened of him that she would start to shake whenever Adam or I told her that he was coming up the road. Some nights, in sheer terror, she hid in a big old wardrobe and slept there until morning. She tried desperately to shield us from him but there was nothing she could do and our suffering broke her heart. She wouldn't dare stand up to him.

My father wanted complete control over our lives and one way to do this was to keep us all hungry. When he left to go to work in the morning, he would lay out two slices of bread, two eggs and one tea bag. It was meant to feed me, my brother and my mother all day. My mother ate very little and she divided the food between her children. Her health was never strong and she became weaker after giving birth to another stillborn when I was two. There had been three stillborn babies in total; one before Adam, then came Nick, a set of twins died, then there was me. No doubt due to the stress and her poor diet, she was always tired and sick.

When I was four years old, I was walking to the beach, something I did every day so I could meet my brother from school, two boys, much older than me began to lift up skirt and touch my body. They told me it was a game. I did not know what was happening to me but I knew it made me feel very uncomfortable. I did not tell anyone because I was afraid of them.

Soon the games became rougher and I was abused almost on a daily basis. The things they did to me, made me feel dirty and I didn't know why. I was sicken by their creeping hands and came to dread the sight of them. I could not seem to escape their horrible mauling of my tiny body. They would warn me that if I told anyone what they were doing, I would be taken away from my mom and put in a home and never be let out.

Between this and my father's beatings I became a very nervous child and was easily upset. I wouldn't go out and play, walk down the street and began to hate going to school because I felt different to the other girls. I found it impossible to make any friends. I wanted to curl up in to a ball, pull the covers over my head and never wake up. But when I did go to bed, I was usually unable to sleep.

There was nothing beautiful about the world I lived in. What was there, I wanted to shut out. I did not understand why it was happening to me but I knew I was being punished, as my father often told that I had the devil in me and I would end up in hell. At Sunday school, the priests and nuns told us if we were good, then angels would take us to heaven when we died. But in the tradition of religion, fear was installed and they made sure we knew about all sin and warned us whatever pain we suffered on this earth, it was a grain of sand compared to the vast beach of eternal suffering that waited for us in hell if we did not do penance for our sins. I was terrified of ending up in a place where my poor little body would be burnt in the devil's flames and I couldn't understand why I had to be punished, as deep down I knew I was a good girl.

I started to refuse to go to school, as my life was becoming unbearable and I kept having fits of crying and spells of bad temper, and so my mother took me to see Dr. Metcalfe. I remember him asking me questions about home life that I couldn't answer. I was terrified my father would find out and then punish me. I could tell Dr. Metcalfe about the boys either, as I didn't want to be parted from my mother and live in a strange house, so I was rude and told him to shut up and stop asking me questions. He asked me what was upsetting me and why I was being defensive. I stared at the floor, a habit I still have as an adult whenever I want to keep my silence. The doctor had no idea what was going on in my life and my mother didn't know about the boys. How could I tell her what the boys were doing? The doctor told my mother that I was delicate and underweight and needed a good nutrition to build me up. She didn't tell him this wouldn't happen because my father rationed the food.

I became a very difficult child as my behaviour deteriorated, according to the teachers, when in reality I was just reacting to the horrible things that were being done to me. I was wrapped in chains of fear and terror. I was a child and I didn't have to words to express what I was feeling, so I would lash out in anger. I began to hate everything I loved. My whole world was being turned upside down. Instead of love, I got beaten and punished, and my body was tortured by the cruel boys. I was confused, frightened and isolated.

I had little support from my brothers, but I understood why as we were all fighting our own battles and trying to escape from our father's wrath. It was like survival of the fittest. Whenever father called for us we would fight over who got to him first, as whoever got there last would endure the worst of his temper. I was the smallest and the weakest so I became the regular target of his fury. However much my mother loved me, she was unable to protect me. A child should look forward to every day with its possibilities for excitement and new adventure but I began to dread every waking moment.

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	3. Daddy's girl part 2

**Disclaimer:** Don't own the characters... just playing/destroying with them

Thank you so much **MC NEW YORK** for the comments and advice and for adding this story your faves already and thank you **SGBS4L **adding the story to the alert list. Thank you!

**Warning:** deals with child abuse and oh... the angst throughout this story will not be done he healthy doses...

**A/N:** Thanks for reading. Please take the time to let me know what you think because it encourages me to continue with the story and leave me constructive critism because it could help me improve as a writer, which is always important and I do check out stories written by those who leave me feedback and will will leave comments on them... This is the last part of 'Daddy's Girl' and then the next chapter will go back to the crimescene. That will be up on Wednesday...

L.P.&.U

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Since I'd been raised in a Catholic household, I was desperately looking forward to my first Holy Communion. It was a ray of light in my darkness. I could become clean and get rid of any dirt. My mother had saved to buy a lovely white dress. I could dress up in my dress wand take the body and blood of Jesus Christ for the first time. One day of joy, to be the centre of attention for once. But I wasn't even aloud that tiny reprieve.

The day before my first Communion, one of the boys went further than he had ever done before. This time he held me down and seemed to be pushing himself inside me. He was so much bigger than me and I felt he was going to smother me. Now I know that the word for what he did to me was rape but back then I couldn't even begin to describe or understand what he had done. I just knew it was wrong and the pain was worse than anything my father had done.

The next morning, all dressed up in my white dress and veil, I remember everyone saying how pretty and nice I looked. But I did not feel pretty and nice; I felt dirty and soiled. My dress was white but my body underneath was coal black, both metaphorically and literally. I was in agony from what the boy had done to me. I just hurt to walk but I couldn't let on why I was shuffling. I was seven years old and all I wanted to do that day was cry. And I thought God knew. God had to know because he knew everything.

It was supposed to be the best day of my life but instead of feeling happy I was anything but in a state of grace. I hated myself and was convinced that I did not deserve those beautiful snow-white clothes. My mother had to drag me down the road to the church. She kept asking me what was the matter with me but I told her there was nothing wrong.

I looked up at her and knew she was proud of her little girl, beautifully turned out. My mom wanted me to be happy on this special day and she became frustrated with my attitude. For her, too, it should have been one bright day in years of darkness. But there was far too much badness going on.

When the priest put the piece of bread on my tongue, I first of all stuck it to the roof of my mouth, as part of me was terrified I might destroy it. Another part of me was hoping it would make me clean again but I didn't feel any different as I walked back down the aisle, keeping my eyes to the ground, burning inside with shame. I wanted to be anywhere but that church. I felt isolated, different and unholy.

A few days after the ceremony, my father started to put me in a shed at the end of the garden all night and would only be taken back in to the house after he had gone to work in the morning. I was terrified of the dark and jumped at every rustle of the trees. I was also freezing and I cried at the thought of the warmth of my house. I curled up in a corner and our dog Molly came in and laid down my feet, keeping them warm. When I cried she came up from my feet and lay beside me. I put my arm around her and fell asleep. Another night I got so cold, I got in to her box and the two of us curled up together for the night. I felt she knew what was going on and she was minding me. The only food I got was from Nick. He would sneak a bit of bread and a mug of tea through the broken window of the shed before he left to do his early mornings work of collecting litter off the bay.

When I became ill, my father let me come back in. It felt like heaven but I didn't know that I would be spending more nights in the shed that I would in my own house.

One night, whilst I was in the house, I called for Molly and she never came. I went out in to the garden and called for her again but she didn't come running. I then heard the sound of her whining and I found her shivering and in a terrible state. I picked her up and carried her back in to the kitchen. My mother came in and got very upset, as she knew our dog was dying. When my father came in, he told us roughly that it was just a dog and there would be no special treatment for a dog in this house. My heart sank but I knew I would get a beating if I spoke up. He was a cruel and evil man who had no mercy in any of his bones. As soon as my father had left to go for his drink, my mother defiantly lit the fire and warmed some milk for Molly. My heart was broken at the sight of my little dog that had looked after me and was now old and sick. Later that day Molly died. I was distraught for weeks after Molly's death. I had no idea what death meant except that Molly would never be coming back. I cried for her and myself as I wondered who would look after me if I ever went in to the shed again. I hated my father. I had never suffered a loss and I felt angry.

The winter came and my father must have though long and hard what to do with me. He stopped putting me in the shed and he would make me sit on a big sliver milk churn in the back garden. I was frozen to the bone and frightened and when the lights went out in the house I felt alone and sad, especially as I no longer had Molly to protect me.

March came andit would bringthe final occasion that my father beat me. I though I was going to die that day. Of all the times he beat me, this one sticks out the most. My mother was a church and I don't know where my brothers were but I was alone with him. Out in the back yard, he hit me with his fists like I was a punch bag. I was aching and in dreadful pain. I thought he would never stop. I wriggled to get away but he was too strong. When I dared to look at him, his eyes were ablaze and sweat was popping out of his forehead and there was froth around his mouth. I could no longer stay quiet and started to scream for mercy but he was deaf to it. He rained blow after blow and everything was burning in pain. He lifted me up from the ground by my hair and I felt my scalp coming away from my head. He spat in my face and dropped me on the ground and walked away. I lay in heap until I heard those steep-tipped boots fading in to the distance. Then I tried to get up but even the slightest movement made me scream out in pain. I lay there paralysed for hours.

It got dark and I saw the lights go on in the house. My face was caked in blood and my legs arms were raw with cuts and throbbing with bruising. I had to stop crying because the salt from my tears stung at my wounds. I could hardly breathe and this made me panic, which made my back on side hurt even more. I remember my mother crying and pleading with him to let her bring me in but he refused, telling her I could go to hell. I remember watching my mother watching me as washed the dishes. By then I was numb with the cold and I began to feel very drowsy. I thought this was it, I'm dying.

I managed to put my lacerated hands together and I preyed to God to forgive my sins, to even forgive my father for what he had done to me. I preyed to God to take me quickly and without much pain. But then an awful thought struck me: what if I had not done enough penance. I would end up in hell. I quaked with fear and started to mutter that I didn't want to die. I so gripped with panic.

I heard the front door slam. I knew he was on his way to the bar and my sobbing mother came rushing towards me. She got so upset I felt guilty for making her so distressed. I told her to go back in but she helped me up and washed and dressed my cuts, causing me to scream out in pain. She later put me to bed but she was still sobbing. When I woke up the following morning, there was an overwhelming silence. I tugged myself out of bed, grasping my rag doll, Lou. I crept in to my Mother's bedroom knowing that my father would be at work by now. I still aching, but thankfully nothing had been broken last night. I tried to push open the door but it was stuck and heavy. I could hear my mother sobbing and choking so I pushed harder. The cream walls were covered in red dots, as if someone had flickered them red paint. The smell of blood was everywhere.My poor loving mother was being slowly crushed by the body of my cruel father but I couldn't understand was he wasn't moving. Blood was seeping out of him, his eyes were glassy and I remember trying to push him off. After several shoves he slid off and my mother's white cotton night gown was soaked in blood. She stayed still, limp andtrembling but a moan came out of her throat. Her nightgown was soaked with blood and dry and stiff with it. The top of the nightdress was ripped open and her breasts were exposed but were stained in blood. The side of her nightdress was also ripped up the side and didn't stop splitting until it reached hip. She saw me looking at her flesh and she covered herself up. Her golden hair seemed to be changing in to a violent red and there were freckles of red on her face. There was dried blood on her hands and arms , it covered her like a dark ruby red map. The tears washed away the blood on her face and turned and vomited lightly, pain locking around her ribs She was shivering and on the verge of screaming but instead she disolved in to sobs. I should have comforted her but Iran to my bed and buried myself under the covers.

I was taken away by woman whose name I can't remember but I didn't let go of her hand. I also had my rag doll on my hip. I remember hearing the whispers and all the people watching. I never say my brothers again after that day for many years. Instead of going in to 'care' straight away I went to live with my father's brother. He owned a farm and two weeks later, while I was playing in the yard with my cousins, he called my name and he and a nun were walking towards me. I could hardly see him but I heard him say, "Come on, you are going to the beach and this nice lady is going to take you in her car. I looked at him in total disbelief. After years of cruelty I was getting some happiness. I ran in to the house, breathless with excitement and I asked my Auntie Annie if I could wear my Communion dress for the trip. She was delighted for me and agreed that I could get dressed up.

I carefully put on my white dress along with my coat, white socks and black shoes. I looked at Lou lying on my bed and I smiled at the thought that I would have so much to tell her when I got back. I thought all my dreams were coming true and I would be running along side the sea on the golden sand.

Little did I know that I was about to enter a nightmare even worse than one I had already known.

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	4. Chapter 2

Hey guys... so much for being up last wednesday day, huh? Sorry but I found out that my computure has 92 contagious files and it was compleatly broken because everytime it loaded up it shut back down again...

So anyway...

Thank you so much to **MC New York, SaraStar, angry penguin, Ally-617-luv-tv, CSigurlie07, ayesha84, dark-girl-faith-sidle.** It means loads that you have taken thetime to review. It was a lot more positive than I'd ever think so yay!Thank you to each and every one of you, it means so much to me.

**MC New York **I love the idea of the doll and will use it.

Again, if anyone has any suggestions, they will be totally appreciated.

Anyway I have put two chapters up...

x x x x

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The moments ticked, each second registered by a sliver, plastic clock.

Sara placed the doll back on its shelf. It was a rich looking doll, imported straight out of China probably. It had bright yellow hair that stood out like cotton candy fluff, hard blue eyes, like transparent agate marbles and a typical pink sweetheart smile. It had black patent leather shoes and a black patent leather belt and a chequered red dress with a matching chequered red bow tangled in the sweeping mass of blonde hair. This kind of detail impressed Sara, as if even the doll was subjected to the amazing and elaborate decadence, which would attract her from time to time.

She moved to look out of the framed window, which was cracked open slightly that the wind hit her face like a dry and cindery dust and it blew in to her eyes and down her throat.

Sara's silence as she worked depressed her. It was her silence. She knew perfectly well that the cars were making noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise but she couldn't hear a thing. The glittering and blinking city hung outside the window in the distance but all she could see now was the rows of houses and people, some who were strangers and some who were strangers from work.

Sara didn't know how long she had been looking before she notice the first dull bumping knock which was followed by two sharp tap-tap, and a crisp voice called her name and Grissom opened the door to see Sara snapping around to see him, rubbing her hands. Her hands felt painfully cold as if blunt needles were sewing up and down her fingers.

"Hey."

She tensed them and the contracted in sharpening and grinding pain that twisted and pulsed up her arm.

"You okay?" He felt wise and cynical as hell.

"Yeah, I just hurt my hand."

Her eyes wide open and hardened like hematite as Sofia entered the room and Sara's expression turned even darker as Sofia greeted her. Sara felt herself shrinking in to a small, black dot.

For some reason, Sofia looked prettier than normal. Her skin was still youthful, peach like, divine silkiness that only a child could possess and her large blue eyes were sizzling. Her mouth also seemed fixed in a sneer that wasn't nasty, but as if she had something sarcastic and amused. She wore a top that was stuck to her body with some kind of electricity and an elegant black jacket. Fake eyelashes and giddy jewellery too. However, Sofia also looked bored to Sara, bored as hell. Bored with bright lights and bored with the beautiful men and bored with her job. Girls like that would have made Sara sick at one point.

"Hi, Sofia." She spoke, annoyance and persistence seeping to her rich musical voice. Sara wanted to melt in to she shadows.

"I thought Brass was the preliminary?" There was an unnatural glisten in her brown eyes as she looked at Gil.

"I thought I told you that he was just covering."

"No," There was a drenching storm inside Sara and her heart thudded. "You didn't."

She raised her finely plucked eyebrow and he offered her an apologetic look. She didn't accept it. She just looked at him, and the pressure of knowledge behind his eyes was so immense; she could have been blinded by it.

"What have you found?" Grissom said in a cool and rational way, as always.

"Semen on the bed sheets. Children's bed sheets. No disturbance in this room."

Sara paused but forced herself to speak, muscles tugging her throat and she cocked her head.

"What's her name?" Sara asked, her face very soft

"Whose?"

"The girl who sleeps in this room. The daughter," Her voice changed to something thick and melodic.

"I don't know, Sara."

"Can you find out for me? Please?" she asked, her voice soft and deep.

There was more bubbling talk between the three of them. Sara's attention wasn't fully given to them, but her answers were like sticky kisses and eventually Sofia went.

Sara was looking in the mirror. It seemed warped and far too sliver. The face in it looked like the reflection you see if you looked in a rippling pool. Sara saw Grissom's head floated up behind her shoulder like an ebony balloon.

She pretended not to notice and opened the jewellery box, draw by draw and finding that all of them stashed and brimming with crosses and crucifixes. He stood beside her and she lifted out a necklace. It was a sliver, slick chain and it's cross was sliver and bulky in shape. The cross was suspended in the air and the wind blew it so it swung softly in the air. Its movement and the way it caught the light enchanted Sara and Gil. Sara thought about how as a child she thought she would have to suffering, do penance, so she could have her cross and then she would finally be able to raise up her hands and drive a nail in to her soft palm.

Sara looked at Gil.

"Grissom, you Catholic once?"

The creases at his eyes tightened at her question, unsure of it relevance.

"Yes, Sara. Once."

She nodded and looked back in to the rippling cross as it hypnotised her.

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	5. Hell's Classroom part 1

I really believed I was going to the beach that day, I couldn't believe my luck and I put out all the horrible things that had happened to me out of my mind. My sorrow would be replaced by happiness and I watched out of the car window the moving green hills and clouds outside, not know where exactly we were going but I was overcome with a feeling of relief. I so full of excitement and hope and I felt my eyes begin to fill up and the tears ran down my face and dripped on to my white dress. The entire drive was silent. I was sat in the back, whilst the nun and my uncle sat in the front.

At the top of a long hill, the car suddenly turned through a gate and drove along a tree lined street. I had a sinking sensation and my happiness began to dissolve. As we turned a corner, a large grey stone building appeared in the windscreen of the car and it sent me in to shivers of fear. It was like a dark monster and as the car drew closer, I could see iron bars on the window. Why were we going here? My fear turned in to panic and I dug my nails in to the storybook I had on my lap.

As we drew up to the front door of the building, it looked even more forbidding. I saw that another nun was waiting at the door and my uncle grabbed me roughly by the hand and we went through the entrance. The waiting nun, the Reverend Mother, escorted us in to an office. My uncle then turned to me and said, "You're going to be staying here for a while." I looked at him in bewilderment and said, "But I can't. Mommy will be looking for me." I still had not grasped to idea of my mother going to prison, everyone had just told me she was going on holiday with my brothers. He said to me he would tell her were I was and that she would come and see me.

"No," I cried. "I want to go home."

It was then he let go of my hand and althoughI didn't like him very much, when I held his hand I felt secure.He looked at me again and said, "You're staying here." Then he just turned and left.

I had butterflies in my stomach and I knew that there was something terribly wrong. It was a hot day and I was shivering. Everything about that place was cold and frightening. Why was I here? Why? But slowly I began to work it out. I was here because I was a bad girl and I was trapped here. The Reverend Mother appeared and sat at her desk. She was fat and ugly and didn't look kind. All I wanted to do was play by the ocean like a normal good girl. A voice in my head kept saying "I am a good girl. I am a good girl. I am a good girl." The teachers, my father and those boys were all wrong. But it was no use; I knew I was about to be punished. I stared down at my shoes, as I could not bear to look around and I was to scared to meet the eye of this horrible, big nun with a cruel expression on her face; an expression of hate and contempt.

"Well, madam," she said finally, "Do you know why you are head?"

"No," I whispered.

"You are here to do what you are told. There will be no more of your bold behaviour. We will make a lady out of you. Speak when you are spoken to and it will be 'yes, Mother' and 'no, Mother.'"

She glared at me and my heart sank even further.

"Well? Did you hear what I said?"

"Yes, Mother."

"From now on," she then said, "You will be known as Kate."

"Yes, Mother," I replied though I hadn't clue what she meant. At the time I thought she must have made a mistake but I was too scared to correct her.

"What do you mean by bringing that in to a holy house?" she asked.

I had no idea what she was talking about at first and then I realised that in my hand I had my story book. My fingers were gripping it as if I was holding on for dear life. She whipped the book from my hand, raised it and hit me on the head. I was stunned and shocked that a holy nun would do such thing and I started to cry.

"There will be no time for storybooks in here. And no need for tears."

I couldn't stop the unhappy tears running down my cheeks. She didn't even know me and she had hit me for no reason. I wiped away the tears with my shaking hands and I knew then that this nun would show my no more mercy than my dead father had done and that my life would be even more miserable because I would not have my mother to give me the love that I craved.

I was taken in to another room were I gave a nun my coat and my sliver bangle to another nun and I was handed a bundle of clothes and two big towels and then led me up stairs, where there were three green bathrooms. The nun filled the bath and told me to get in. I took my clothes off and did as I was told. She handed me a large bar of soap. I remember thinking, 'this is why I am here. I have to take a bath because I am dirty and the nuns know it.' I scrubbed myself again and again, hoping that somehow I could make myself clean inside and out.

When the nun told me to get out of the bath she handed me a towel and it grated at my skin. I then put on my clothes I had been given which we plain and horrible. I was also given a medal with a picture of Our Lady on it and the words 'prey for me.' I don't know what happened to my dress or my shoes; I never saw them again. The nun told me to follow her.

I kept my eyes downward, I was afraid to look around. Eventually we entered a large dormitory which contained 16 beds. It seemed to stretch out forever and I had never seen so many beds in one place. I wondered which one was mine. The nun, as if reading my thoughts, pointed to the bed on my left.

"This is where you will sleep," she said.

I stood still and lost as I looked around. The walls were magnolia and there were iron bars on the window. The sun was spilling through on to the wooden floor. The tears welled up again and the nun looked at me coldly and said, "No time for tears in here." She then took me to another room where there were more girls that I had ever seen in one place. It was the recreation room and the girls where chatting, arguing and fighting with one another. They all looked so much older than me. They all looked so much older than me. As soon as the nun left, some of them started picking on me and shoving me around. They wanted to know where I had come from and how old I was and what my name was. Despite the Reverend Mother had said to me, I told them my name was Sara and they started to taunt me, saying that I was a 'posh bitch' and 'thinks she's something special.'

Later we were marched to the dining hall. We were served some sort of slop from a big bucket with ladles. It was a cold, depressing room. One of the nuns stood up and announced, "We have a newcomer and she will be called Kate." It was only when everyone turned to stare at me I realised she was speaking about me. I sat there, unsure of who I was.

We were marched again in single file and directed to our beds. The lights were turned out straight away and we were warned about the consequences of any chatter, I lay there in the dark, waiting for sleep.

The next morning I was woken by the loud clapping of a nun's hands. Everyone jumped out of bed and my eyes were swollen from crying all night. They were so sore, I could barely touch them. I washed alongside the other girls in the bathroom. After we got dressed, we were marched down to Mass and then it was back to the dining hall for another bowl of sludge. We were then marched to a classroom. Again it was miserable and cold: the whole place had the same dank and depressing atmosphere. There was no colour in the room, everything was black and white. We sat behind old wooden desks and we were not given anything to write with. An old nun stood at the front of the classroom talking and writing on the blackboard. I didn't know what she was trying to teach us. We sat in silence while she went on and on but I remember feeling surprised that all the girls kept so quiet. I would soon find out that reason was the big leather strap that lay on the desk in front of the nun. At lunch time we were given our bread and grey slop. In the afternoon there were more classes and then at five we were gathered in to the great hall to say our prayers and then giving another dosage of the offal tasting goop. After that, for about an hour, we were aloud to go in to the recreation room and at seven or eight we were marched up to the dormitory.

I'd give anything to be back at my old school. I was smart and until the nights in the shed started, the teachers were considering to let me skip a grade. It was just another dream that was crushed. But I soon discovered that the nuns were not going to waste their time teaching us when they could use us to do their dirty work instead.

The next day I was downgrading from pupil to slave.


	6. Hell's Classroom part 2

Oh my goodness...thank you so much all of you who are reading this story. And double thanks to;

**pigeonofdoom**(x)**, MC New York**(x)** , Dybdahl**(x)**, icklebitodd**(x)**,Nnyliram**(x)**, forensicsgirl97**(x)**, Silent as the Grave**(x)**, Who-will-change-the-world **(x)**, Cherrydrops12**(x)**, SaraStar**(x)**, dark-girl-faith-sidle**(x)**, jóhanna**(x)**, Ally-617-luv-tv**(x)** and ayesha84**(x)  
who reviewed the last chapter... I means so much. Thank you! I so appreciate it, you people are fab! The comments I've gotten for this story has been extremely wonderful and have kept me motivated to write.

**Ally-617-luv-tv **- yep that sort of stuff and much worsethings happenedin the Catholic Church during the 20th century.

**forensicsgirl97-**Okay I made Sara be called Kate because I read that nuns change thier name... I then found out that it is actually only Eastern Orthodox so oops...so mini flaw there.

**Nnyliram- **will check my spelling better. thanks for letting me know: ) x

Also a thought came to be because of what **dark-girl-faith-sidle **wrote so I thought I should just say I mean to offend anyone who is a Roman Catholic or has family or friends who is a nun or a priest or works in psychiatric institutions or care or anything like that because there are a lot more nice ones than nasty ones. Anyway I have started writing the next chapter so that will be up on wednesday/thursday. Actually I don't have that much homework to do so it might be up sooner than that

x

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The following day I was not allowed to go to the classroom. A nun handed me a cloth and an old chrome bucket. She took me to the bathrooms and told me to clean the baths and shine the taps. I had to scrub them and I was punishing my little body as for days afterwards my legs and arms would ache. I had to get used to it though as most days I was cleaning some part of the building. Bathrooms, toilets, corridors and kitchens replaced the classroom for me and a large number of other girls. We would be stuck in the school the odd morning but most of the time we were slaves to the nuns. They were supposed to be educating the girls in their care and they were being paid to do so. Even at the age of eight I knew that the nuns were doing something wrong. 

I cleaned the banisters and the stairs and the windowsills and the desks and the day room. My knees became raw from moving along the stone and marble floors of the school. Whenever we were cleaning and scrubbing there was always a nun in the area making sure we didn't slack of and chat to each other. Every little bit of dirt was to be washed away. I went to be exhausted and I woke up exhausted the next morning. None of us ever got any thanks.

According to the nuns, this was our punishment for being wicked sinners. We had to do penance and it was the only way to save our souls and keep us from hell. Idleness was a sin and the devil work for idle hands, so we had to work to keep him away. This was the excuse the nuns gave for working girls morning, noon and night in a manner that even a strong adult would find next to impossible to endure.

I didn't make many friends, it was difficult to make friends since idle chatter led to evil chatter and because I was the youngest there, no one attempted to talk to me. I did overhear conversations though I did hear some other older girls talk about how they had never thought impure thoughts or done impure things. I wondered if this was related to a horrible incident that had happened to me after about a month of slaving away. A nun dragged me to a room placed on a table. The wicked nun said she was going to check whether or not I was intact. I didn't know what she meant but she ordered me to lie back as she removed my underclothes. I became hysterical, thinking of what the boys had done to me and two other nuns held me down as she stuck her finger in to me and I screamed with pain. I learned that every girl was put through this routine, this violation. One teenage girl declared intact gave birth to a baby a few months later.

I would often think about what the priest would tell us at mass about impure thoughts and I was afraid I would die in my sleep and awake in hell. Most of the girls became so traumatised that they would frequently wet the bed. I never did. This made the nuns furious and if they discovered the soiled sheets on our beds in the morning then they would make us strip them off and screaming at us, telling us what disgusting, filthy creatures we were.

Once they got used to me, the other girls accepted me and, because I was so much younger than them, they used to look after me. I was almost like a little pet or mascot for them. The nuns however, continued to pick on me and made no allowances for my age. I worked as hard as any other girl there. The nuns kept putting me down, crushing my sprit, chipping away any self-worth that was left. The fat, ugly Reverend Mother told me I was stupid, bold and troublesome and that was why I was here.

"Yes, I know all about your disgusting mother and if you don't repent, you will end up just like her, you dirty little bitch."

I was convinced that she could get the dirt out of me. I had sinned and had to be punished. I asked the nuns if I could go back to school, I wanted to learn what little there was to be learned in that dank classroom. But they told me there was no point; I would never amount to anything anyway. However several times, I did get the pleasure to clean the school library and is was amazing to see the amount of books. I became fascinated with the thousands of pages available to me. Of course, there was no science or children's books but I enjoyed stroking the pages as a turned the page of a James or Steinbeck. I would never touch anything religious, I wasn't holy enough.

Although at times I was very lonely, I began to get used to the routine and the work would dull my sadness. I would throw myself in to the work and pretend I was in my bubble which prevented me from any harm. One day followed and the next and by bedtime I would be numb with tiredness. The worst thing was being away from my mother and not knowing if I would ever see her again. I prayed each night for her to visit me and three or four weeks later, they were answered.

She was accompanied by two police officers, a big, hulking man dressed in white; he was my mother's carer and my uncle but he disappeared when he saw me. I knew that she hated my uncle because he was a foul, violent pig just like my father and he was identical in looks. I was so delighted to see her, at first I couldn't speak. I remember she was wearing a black and white checked coat and she handed me a box of sweeties and the most beautiful doll. Now that I think about it, my mom's visit may have timed to coincide with my seventh birthday, but I wouldn't have known, as the nuns never marked birthdays.

Once I got my tongue back, I begged my mother to take me out of this place. She was surprised that I wasn't going to school and assured me she would do her very best to help. She told me that should talk to my uncle, as since he had put me here, he was the only one to take me out. Upon hearing this, my heart sank. I knew that my uncle had always disliked me and he hated me even more now that my father was dead and he was glad I was out of his house. He would never help me and I would be stuck in the school forever. I started crying and screaming and my mother tried to comfort me but I was inconsolable.

The Reverend Mother heard the commotion and came in to the room. She told the authority figures to take my mother away but I leapt to my mother's side, knocking over the bag of sweets and they scattered all over the floor. I thought it was wonderful to see the different colours. I grabbed hold of my mother's coat and she was so upset I could see the tears well up in her eyes. The Reverend Mother grabbed hold of me by the waist but I held on so hard that the buttons popped off my mother's coat and fell to the floor. I was beside myself. I felt as though my heart was going to burst through my chest. My mother was escorted away and the Reverend Mother battered me and threatened me with all sorts of punishments if I did not behave myself. As an adult, I can truly say, I hated that bitch of a nun, about as much as my father. She had literally torn me away from my mother, someone I wouldn't see again for many years. She told me to go to the dormitory and to calm myself down. I ran up the corridor, desperate to catch a glimpse of my mother. As I watched her walk away, actually she was being dragged, her knees being scraped along the floor while her arms were held on tightly by the men.

For the next few weeks, on every visiting Sunday, I would sit, waiting in my navy jacket and swinging my legs, hoping that it would be day that my mother would come and whisk me away. Whenever the nuns saw me they would laugh and say, "Do you not realise you mother doesn't want you anymore? That's why she made sure you were sent away."

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	7. Hell's Classroom part 3

**Disclaimer:** I haven't done one for a while so I don't any of the characters from CSI, just the ones I make up.

_**Thank you**_ so much to anyone who has read this story and thank youso much those who took the time to let me know what you think and it really makes a difference... Thank you so much to:

**Ally-617-luv-tv, Silent as the Grave, icklebitodd, Cherrydrops12, SaraStar, Dybdahl, dark-girl-faith-sidle, ayesha84, forensicsgirl97, pigeonofdoom**

**x's to all of ya...x**

**Dybdahl**- hiya, I haven't actually seen the film but I wrote a few chapters ago that was inspired by events ect…and it was things like the 'fallen' girls I was inspired by because I watchedadocumentry andwas pretty shocked by itso that's pretty much how this started.x

**Icklebitodd**- thanks for the reply to the A/N from the last chapter…and the review part too…but extra thanks because I was so worried that it would offend someone I don't want to do that at all…also I loved the 'quick sand' thing…thank you x

**forensicsgirl97**- yeah they checked…thank you for reviewing x

**ayesha84**- tons of smiles (sort of) in this chapter…it won'tlastx

**Pigeonofdoom**- heya. Thank you so much for review so quick…like I uploaded the chapter…went away for a few minuets and its like 'you have one review' and I was like 'nifty 'so thank you x

Thank you again to everyone who reviewed/reads... It makes me happy. Next chapter will be up at the weekend and its the last one in this part of the story.

Hope everyone has a great week x x x

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Not all the nuns were as cruel, and the one that ran the kitchen was wonderfully nice and said that she would teach me how to bake. I grasped at the small ray of kindness. One day six of us were summoned to the kitchen, as some visitors were expected the next morning. We used to call the visitors 'posh heads'. Myself, Doreen who was 13, Joan 12, Michelle 14, Liz 12 and Sylvia 11 went to the kitchen to help make brown bread and fruitcakes. While we were working, the Reverend Mother suddenly came in and told me I was to go work in the day room. I told her I did not want to because I wanted to stay in the kitchen, with my friends. I don't know how I managed to stand up to her, maybe it was because I was so beaten down that I did not care what happened to me anymore or maybe that bold girl they kept talking about was coming out. What ever it was, I felt no fear. 

"Have it your way," she said and she left me there. Stupidly I thought I had won but a few minuets later she sent for me. As I entered her office, the Reverend Mother's eyes were on fire with anger. She was twisting a black leather strap through her hands and told me to shut the door behind me. Fear bubbled and hissed in my stomach.

I saw nothing but the strap and her fingers gripping it. I couldn't stand the sight of it and so I looked down at the floor that I had washed and shined on my hands and knees so many times before; my penance that I now knew was not wasted. I was going to be punished. There was an awful silence and she screamed, "Look at me, you bold girl. Look at me."

I could her cruel, black voice echoing all over the room. I wanted to scream back at her but I knew that it would do no good. I thought I was going to wet myself and my legs wouldn't stop shaking. Her anger was everywhere. I slowly brought my eyes upwards to the leather strap in her hands and then to her face.

I was paralysed. I saw reflected in her eyes the same rage that my father's always display before her began to beat me. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I could smell it coming through the pores of her cold, clammy white face and I could feel the heat from her breath. I saw her hand slide down and grip the end of the strap.

"I am going to teach you never to speak like that again. You will not defy me," she said.

I felt my breath coming in short gasps and my heart began to beat rapidly in my chest. She asked me to hold out my hands and told me that if I pulled away I would get five extra slaps. I put my hands out and the reflexively pulled them back. My knees and legs were shaking. She held my hands on her desk so I could not pull them away, then she began to beat them. The pain was unbearable and my hands ended up red raw as the Reverend Mother rained down the blows until, she was panting for breath and with sweat rolling down her forehead, she ran out of energy.

My hands were on fire. The pain ran up and down my fingers. I thought they were broken and my heart ached in the same way it did after my father's beatings and a voice in my head ran saying, "I don't deserve this. I am only a child. I am a good girl. I know I am good." I wanted the beating in my heart to stop, I wanted to disappear. I wanted to die.

She told me to go back in to the kitchen and I did. My hands were becoming numb. That's what happens: first fiery pain, then numbness and when that wears off, unbearable aching. While I held back during the punishment, I cried as I walked down the corridor. Back in the kitchen, the only consoling words I got were from Sylvia, who told me, it would be all right and that I would get used to it. How could any child get used to a beating like that? My despair grew as I listened to her as I realised that there was more to come.

After a few days, the redness on my hands turned black and yellow and it seemed as though the pain would never go away. They didn't get a chance to heal properly as I was put to work scrubbing and washing and shining the floors. With every move of the cloth and the bucket, my hands ached anf the opened sores oozed pus after they became infected from dirty water and raw bleach. Every day I looked at my hands and I would cry. I didn't know it then, but it that single incident would cause me to go in to a dream-like state every time I injured my hands as an adult.

Time passed and it was cookery day again. By now I had become angry about the way I was treated and I suddenly saw my chance to take revenge. The five girls and I were working at the wooden table, each of us given our own task. I got the job of putting the milk into a big chrome jug.

The nun in charge of us went to the pantry to get a bowl of flour. This was my opportunity. While she was gone I took a big bar of carbolic soap from the kitchen sink. It was kept in a while dish that had blue pattern. It had a strong smell coming from it. I turned the tap on and put the soap bowl in the sink. I slowly rubbed it between my hands until lather formed. The more I rubbed, the more suds came out. When the dish underneath was full of soapsuds, I gently picked up the dish and poured it in to the jug of milk, then mixed the suds in with a wooden spoon. I put everything back in its place and quickly returned to my seat.

The nun came back with her flour and placed the bowl on the table. "Now, girls, we will have eggs first, a pinch of salt and then we will add the milk," she said. When it came to add the milk she told me, "Gently does it. A little drop at a time."

As I saw the suds merging in the mixture, my heart leapt and the girls kicked each other under the table with delight. The cake and bun mixtures were then out in the oven. We all left the kitchen and went to hall for our evening meal. The talk in the dormitory later on was all about what would happen when the lethal baking was eaten. I'd hadn't seen so many smiles at one timein that place and the laughter was fantastic.I was seven and I felt brilliant.

That evening, the nuns gorged into a feast of cake and buns. The following day, the kitchen crew were called in to the Reverend Mother's office. She told us that seven or eight of the nuns had been very sick during the night and those nuns affected were the ones who had eaten our pastries. Joan asked what had happened to them and she replied, "The poor nuns have been on the toilet all night with diarrhoea and I want to know which one of you caused it."

None of the girls opened their mouths but we knew it would only be a matter of time before I would suffer the pain of the Reverend Mother's wrath and she had no problem in working out that I had been the one responsible. We later learned that the nuns who had fallen sick had spent three days and nights on the toilet. It was delicious.

I was told that I was to be made an example out of and I paid dearly for what I had done. For some time, I was immersed in freezing baths twice a week until I was blue and the tips of my fingers were numb. I would shake for hours and felt I would never get warm. But even while I was being put in the bath, I was planning what to do next.

The punishments made me coming out of my shell really quickly. I was here to stay and despite everything, I knew I had to survive. I was becoming an expert at scrubbing the floors and defying the nuns. We made our own fun and had some good times, despite the punishing regime. I would march up and down the recreation room, pretending to recite the rosary in the manner of the nuns. We mimicked the way they walked and talked, and then fell around the room laughing. If we were caught stepping out of line, however, the nuns would stop us talking to each other.

One particularly vicious nun used to take great amounts of pleasure in punishing me when I misbehaved. She would make me drink glass after glass of water until I felt as though my bladder was about to explode. I would be so desperate to pee and I would beg her, "Sister, Sister, please let me go to the toilet. I am going to pee on the floor." But she would just stand there looking at me before saying, "You disgusting little creature. You would, wouldn't you?" She would keep me there so long that eventually I would have to let go and feel the burning humiliation as the hot urine ran down my leg and in to a puddle on the wooden floor. That was the excuse she was waiting for to beat me. Then she would make me clean up the mess.

The few nice nuns who were good to us were as afraid of the regime as we were. The Reverend Mother told them that they were far too lenient with us and that the girls were here to learn discipline and to be punished or their sins. We were constantly reminded that we were sinners.

Just as I was starting to get used to the harsh routine of the school, things took a horrible turn for the worse. Some of us were given the duty of helping the priest out before and after Mass on Sunday morning. I was given the job of clearing the religious implements. At first the priest was kind and said that he would help me to get back home. Liz, who also helped the priest, told me not to talk to him but I didn't know what she meant.

After a short while, however, he began to pester me when Mass was over. He started by touching meand then when he was finished he would wipe himself with a tissue as if my dirt was burning his fleshy hands. Liz and I were his main targets. When I complained to him, he said, "Well you want to go home, don't you?" before reminding me not to tell anyone what had been going on.

Two days before Christmas Eve, the Reverend Mother sent for me and I went to the office. She asked me to close the door and then opened the big book on the desk, looked at me and told that I was going home to my home for Christmas. I was to be ready to leave that afternoon. I stood there in shook. I could not talk, tears rolled down my face. The ugly old witch then said, "When you came here, your cried for weeks and now you are crying because you are going home." She gave me a look of contempt and raised her voice, "Get out of my sight. I don't understand you."

And she was right, she didn't understand me. I was crying tears of happiness, as I could not believe I was going home for Christmas.

The nun who had brought me here back in the spring came to collect me at about midday and the Reverend Mother walked to the door with us.

"We will see you when you return, two days after St Stephen's day." It didn't register what she was saying. All I could think about was that I was going home. I got in to the car and as we drove away down the long avenue, I looked back at the building and I shuddered as the car turned out of the entrance and onto the road that would take me home.

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	8. Hell's Classroom part 4

Thanks so much to those of you who take the time to let me know what you think of this story, and what you think of each chapter. It means so much to me. You're probably sick of me saying it, but it really does help.

Thank you so much Pigeonofdoom, dark-girl-faith-sidle, Silent as the Grave, icklebitodd, Cherrydrops12, MC New York, Dybdahl andAlly-617-luv-tv

and thank you so much to anyone who checks this out... Hope everyone enjoys what's left of the weekend

x

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It was dark when we arrived at my Uncle Ian and Auntie Annie's residence. I could see Christmas lights in some of the houses and I was excited and delighted by them. But I was also nervous. I knew that my uncle Vincent would be there and I remembered the stories that mother would tell me, that he was capable of the same things my father was. Like all children, though I lived in hope that things might have changed.

The nun and I got out of the car, opened the small gate and I ran up the path. My Auntie Annie was sat on the porch, waiting for me and she was illuminated by the electric lighting of the porch. She started crying and she wrapped her arms around me.

It had seemed like year since I last saw her. I wanted to hold on to her forever.

"You are very thin," she remarked and I hugged her even tighter.

I whispered, "I'm not going back to that place."

She took my hands and looked me straight in the eyes.

"Don't worry, you are not going back. You will be better off here. I never wanted you to there. It won't do you any good."

I was overcome with joy.

We into the house and the nun followed. My Auntie offered the nun a cup of coffee or tea. The nun refused.

The nun's parting words were, "Be good, young lady."

I said, "Goodbye, Sister," but in my mind I added "you old bitch". I felt like being cheeky to her but instead I bit my tongue. I could not wait for her to be gone.

Mt uncle was in the kitchen. He did not look happy to see me. He made no move to embrace me. He was normal gruff self.

"You are only here for Christmas because your Auntie wanted you home. If it wasn't be here, you wouldn't be here at all.

It was a horrid welcome but I was so overcome with being home that I paid less attention than I should have.

My Auntie Annie called in her boys, Jack, 11 and William, 8. She gave us spaghetti bolognaise and cake. I tackled it and it was bliss compared to the slop I had been eating for the past nine months. I ran my finger around the plate and sucked the red ooze off my finger. My uncle got out of his chair and left without saying anything. Jack and Will finished and went back outside to play. They didn't bother inviting me and I convinced myself I didn't want to be with them anyway. My Auntie Annie asked me to go up to my bedroom and fix my bed covers and pillow. It puzzled me, because I knew that she was a tidy person. But I did what she asked me and so up the stairs I went to my bedroom.

I nearly burst in to tears when I saw my doll Lou tucked up under the covers on the side of pillow waiting for me. The doll was just lying there as I remembered my thoughts of that day, which instead of being the best became the worst day of my seven-year-old life. It had all just been a cruel trick and there was nothing to tell. I picked up Lou, held her to my chest and whispered in her ear, "There is nothing to tell you Lou." I tar slipped down my cheek and I wiped it off my sleeve because in knew that I had disappointed Lou already and I did not want to upset her by letting her see me cry. I put her back on my bed and told her not worry because some day I would get to the beach and then I would have an even better story to tell.

I looked at the pillow and it was perfectly in place but I picked it up and rearranged it anyway. There in the space underneath were four perfectly wrapped sweets. I ran down stairs and in to the kitchen.

"Look what I found, Auntie Annie, four sweets."

She smiled at me and told me that I was lucky to have found them. I never wanted to leave the house again because it was the loving little kindnesses that made my Auntie Annie very special. It was late and she took me to bed. She couldn't understand why I put my pillow on the floor but I explained to her that we didn't have pillows at the school and I was now used to sleeping without one. I hugged her goodnight. She gave me a kiss.

Not much happened on Christmas Eve. I spent most of it looking at the Christmas tree. It was small and stood in a silver bucket. The house next to us had a luscious and tall tree with long green arms. Ours was pathetic and limp compared to it but I convinced myself that ours was the best, the most magical and nicest. It didn't strike me then that ours was so small because my Uncle was so mean. I watched my uncle decorate it. I envied him because able to touch the different textures. I asked my Auntie Annie if my mother and brothers were coming for dinner. That was everything was explained to me. My mother was in prison after being in hospital because it was wrong to kill someone, no matter how horrible they are. Adam was also in prison; he had been taking illegal medicine. He wasn't ill, and he felt very sad so he took things to make him happy. Nick had gone to live with some very nice people…but he had run away and no body knew where he was. I felt very alone.

Christmas morning came. The presents were under the tree. I got a doll and a storybook and some other small presents. Nothing from my mother or brothers and I felt very spoilt that I could not appreciate what I had got. The boys got cowboy outfits with guns and hats and holsters.

We went to mass.

After that we walked home, minus Uncle Ian. I didn't know where he went.

I was very miserable. My uncle came home, intoxicated. You couldn't smell it though. He would drink vodka and then refresh his aftershave. I wondered if there was something in the Sidle blood that made you act violent or have a dependence upon alcohol. Whatever joy we had was taken away by his selfish ways. He was always thinking about himself. I didn't know what made him that way, if something happened to him to make him so cruel, so self-centred, so mean. No one else mattered. Only him.

Auntie Annie took me to bed. He reminded me of my mother a lot. Christmas is supposed to be a happy time but she looked so sad. I could see that she was anxious and nervous. She was so lonely and so lost that she made me want to cry. She went downstairs, looking out the window and waiting for her drunk and violent husband. She was unable to do things for her children that a mother should be aloud to do. She wasn't aloud to give any affection to her own two sons. My Auntie Annie was so beautiful, so loving, so caring but so sad and it was my uncle's fault. I fell asleep with five tears in my eyes. A tear for Nick, a tear for Adam, a tear for my Auntie Annie, a tear for my mother and a tear for Christmas.

We went through the same routine on St Stephen's day as he continued his drinking spree. In the middle of the evening meal, my uncle suddenly announced that the next day everything would return to normal. Christmas was over and we were all supposed to forget about Santa and Christmas. He then turned his attention to me.

"The nun will be here to take you back and I don't want any nonsense."

Inside, I was screaming, but I told him politely that I wasn't going back.

"Am I, Auntie Annie?" I looked towards my saviour, my Auntie for confirmation.

"No, Ian, Leave her where she is. I don't want her to go back there"

"She will do what I tell her," he replied, "or maybe you want to with her, too?"

That was the end of the conversation.

I couldn't sleep that night. I could picture the Reverend Mother waiting for me with her big leather strap and the buckets and the endless corridors and my knees cut up from the stone floors and the large hall and the dormitory… I vomited. I wasn't going back, no matter what he said.

The next day, my uncle came in to the garden where I was sat with Lou in my arms reading the storybook to her.

"Get your coat on, we are going out."

I knew not to trust him. I told him I wasn't putting my coat on and I wasn't going anywhere. He shouted at me.

My legs were shaking and my head was spinning. I didn't know what to say or what to do. I went to my room and put my coat on. I looked out of the window at all the children playing in the street. So many people I wish I knew so I could get rid of the loneliness. I watched them and then suddenly I caught sight of a black ugly car turning in to the road. It stopped outside the gate. I saw the nun getting out of the car. I came down the stairs like thunder. I was screaming and crying, "I am not going back with that bitch of a nun."

My Auntie was crying and my Uncle yelled at me, "Don't talk about the holy nun like that. You're going back."

At the house, there was a cubbyhole in the kitchen, under the stairs. I can't remember how I found it but you had to crawl on your hands and your knees so far because the opening was so small. Then you had to lay on your stomach to crawl the rest of the way in. When my uncle opened the door and ran to the kitchen. When he realised I had disappeared, he was fuming with rage and all the bile he had kept in over Christmas started pour out. The first place he looked was the cubbyhole, but there were two long pieces of wood attached to the partition and I was able to stand on them and hide.

I could hear him shouting, "Where is she?"

My auntie knew exactly where I was hiding and as he went out in to the yard Annie whispered, "Sara, don't make a sound."

He came back in and I got down of the wood and sat down against the back of the wall on one of the pipes.

The next thing I knew he was on his hands and knees staring up into the hole at me.

I screamed at him, "I am not going back, I am not going with that bitch."

"If you don't come out, I will give you the worst beating you have ever had," he roared.

"I don't care. Go on, give me a beating. My father always did it to me anyway." So I sat there trembling. He was shouting and screaming, trying to grab my legs with his huge hands, as if he was a doctor trying to rip a baby out of a womb.

Then his face disappeared. There was a horrendous banging. He had gone to get the big steel hammer and was trying to crush down the wall.

"You'll be sorry," he shouted and I could see bits of plaster dropping to the ground. I was rocking myself. It seemed like he spent hours battering the wall until he made a big hole and the rest of it he pulled away with his hands.

He looked at me and said, "Now come out of there, don't make me come in there and get you."

His voice was very soft, not violent at all.

I came out crying and sat on the stairs sobbing. I was small and delicate, shivering and crying uncontrollably.

Annie had started shouting at Ian and I can't remember anything about it, the words or phrases but I remembered how it ended; with a large and sharp slap and a thump which was followed by my Auntie Annie whimpering and coughing.

I didn't want Auntie Annie to get hurt anymore so I moved in the lounge area.

I felt very dead.

"I am ready to go now."

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x 


	9. Hell's Classroom part 5

_Hey everyone... _last part to the'hell's classroom'bit...only two/three big parts to go...just got two quick questions before I go on... would it be wrong to kill pinocchio...he is an object but he has a personality...its been bugging meall day...the other thing... has my story got boring or bad because if it has I am sorry...tell me how to improve it if it has... thank you...xx

Also big thank you **Cherrydrops12, dark-girl-faith-sidle, forensicsgirl97, icklebitodd, pigeonofdoom, SaraStar Silent as the Grave** for reviewing the last chapter, thank you so much...it is wonderful to know what you think about it...also thank you to anyone else who has reviewed in the past chapters, I can't believe how many reviews I have, its so fantastic and thank you to anyone who has read the story...THANK YOU xXxXxXxXx

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I was back at the reformatory school. As I stepped into the car my heart and spirit were broken and I felt hollow and empty. I was utterly miserable and numb with sorrow. The only consolation was that I could find about being back was that I got to see Liz and Joan and the other girls I had grown close to. 

I wouldn't be allowed to go home the next Christmas.

The weeks and months of misery passed. I was allowed to go school more often than I had been. I got to like dusting the Reverend Mother's office, as the other girls taught me to pick the lock on the big wooded desk with an old-fashioned hairpin. I carried that hairpin around in my shoes everyday. One day I would take big sticks of white chalk and other days I would steal elastic bands. Sometimes I find a big stash of sweets and they were always good day. I would take one for me, one for Liz and one for Doreen: that's all I ever took in case they were missed. That was our treat or the day and it felt great; and the fact the nuns didn't know made us feel like we had some kind of power. I began to hide books from the library and the school under my dress and I would read them; so many fascinating things to learn. I think I even impressed the new teacher. She was young and never mean to me, to any of the girls actually.

I learnt that they only way to survive was to get up and keep going. I danced on the tables every chance I got and sang as loud as I could. They weren't going to keep me down. Every time I was caught and punished I didn't cry. I wasn't going to cry and I drove the nuns mad. Liz had given me that advice.

"You have to get tough," Liz said. It was exactly what I was going to do. "You can't let them win. Never cry, even if you get hit with the black leather belt. Keep thinking how they feel when you don't cry. It will drive them mad. And believe me, that is a great feeling."

The only thing I couldn't stand was the abuse by the filthy priest. It had started again as soon as I got back after Christmas and got worse and worse. I remember how her followed me out of the vestry in to the dormitory and forced himself on me the way the boy had done before my first Communion. The pain was even worse this time and when he wiped himself with his disgusting white tissue I could see streaks of blood.

Liz and I had talked about what he was doing to us and I told her I was going to tell the Reverend Mother, so he would stop.

"You won't be here for long if you do that," she said whilst braiding my hair. "Where do you think all the girls went who left the school?"

"Home, of course."

"Who told you that?"

"The nuns."

"God, you so stupid sometimes, Sara," she said. "They were shipped off to a loony bin. That's what happens if you say anything about what goes on in this place. You get stuck with all the maddies. Drugged up to the eyeballs."

She was silent for a long time and so was I as she finished the plaits. When she was finished she hugged me tightly, telling me she didn't want to lose me, asking me who she was supposed to look out for if she lost me. Liz started crying, something I never seen her do. She begged me to keep my mouth shut.

But I was so desperate to get the priest to stop hurting me so I told the Reverend Mother what was going on. I told her that the priest was 'doing things' to me. She kept asking me questions. She didn't register any concern and told me that I needed to wash my mouth out. She told me to go away. I told Liz that I told the nun and she had also tried to tell the Reverend Mother but had gotten the same response.

A week later I was taking to a city hospital. I didn't know which city though and I never found out. I was led in to a room where there was a male doctor waiting to talk to me. The nun who had accompanied me waited outside. The man seemed very kind and I really believed that he would be able to help me. I was there for a long time just telling him everything and he wrote it all down. He asked me if I had told anyone what was going on and I said that I had tried to talk to the Reverend Mother but she had said I was wicked. He asked me if I told anyone else and I told him I said I had told Liz. When he asked what Liz had said, I told him that she had said I would go the mental asylum. He sat back in his big chair and looked at me. The he said, "Don't you worry. We will get this sorted. Wait outside in the corridor."

And I did. I thought he would be the kind doctor and rescue me and I thought there was no way I was ever going back to that school. The nun was in the there for ages and when she came out she had a face like thunder. "That will teach you," I thought but then I was brought back down to Earth when she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me down to the car. She didn't say a word to me and I sat beside her in mute silence.

When we got back I told Liz what happened and she said to me, "You won't be here for long." I told her I was glad that I had told the doctor what had happened to me but she just said miserably, "You have a lot to learn." She knew it all, as she was a lot older than me. I loved Liz. She was splendid; long red hair that was full and shining, an oval face and fathomless green eyes. She had a sprinkle of freckles across her cheeks and beautiful white teeth.

The next day, Liz didn't come to the yard or to Mass. When I asked one of the nuns where she was, she told me it didn't concern me, that she had gone home to help her mother. I was heartbroken: my best friend had gone home and I was left there without her.

A week passed and I was sent for again. The nun sent to, "You are going home. Be ready to go as there will be someone here to collect you in one hour."

I was ecstatic and I ran to tell all the other girls. But instead of being pleased for me they laughed and said, "More like the nut house."

I thought back to what Liz had said and what all the other girls had said. I got really frightened, as I realised I might not be going home after all. I became hysterical and I started screaming. The girls said that if you went there, you would be locked in a prison cell and you would never get out.

I remember coming out of the door of the reformatory school and not knowing where I was. I don't remember the journey. I just remember getting there and the big doors closing behind me.

I was almost nine years old and because I had dared to tell the abuse I had suffered at the hands of the holy priest, I was now trapped in a psychiatric hospital.

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I'm sorry...I want to make sara a bit more unhappy...but happiness will come...soon... -ish... 

x


	10. Chapter 3

Hi guys…sorry that this has taken so long to be update but I always get stuck on these bits and then when I finally wrote it, I got sunstroke… I also realised…I don't have writers block…I write something and end up erasing it, because it looks terrible. It's frustrating and annoying…meh…

Thank you to everyone who reads this. Double thank you to all who take the time to let me know what you think.

Big thank you **dark-girl-faith-sidle, icklebitodd, pigeonofdoom, Dybdahl Silent as the Grave, The Magic Bringer** for reviewing the last chapter, thank you so much...it's great to know what you think about it... and thank you to anyone who has read the story...thank you x

The Magic Bringer- Thank you for reviewing…this is the bit with processing…but its not very good because I don't know how the process thing properly works, so we'll see if it works…if not I'll just do better in the next one…x x

Icklebitodd- Yeah, I am reading it… its okay…thank you so much for the response about Pinocchio. Sorry you found it upsetting xx

Silent as the Grave- thank you hugs x x

dark-girl-faith-sidle I just love reading your reviews…they're fab…thank you…x x

Pigeonofdoom-thank you, thank you so much for reviewing…so sorry it wasn't up sooner… x x

Dybdahl- I can half say that things will get better...Thanks for reviewing x x

Have a great week x luvs n hugs x

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The sun was rising and they were sat in the dining room of the house, waiting for a phone call from the Lab. They weren't processing because Sara and Grissom needed a break, even if it was for a few moments. 

In the bathroom, they had discovered several drinking glasses with unidentifiable orange ooze floating in the bottom of them. Sara had found a slim white door. A picture was carved in to it. A male was hanging from a tree with his face was upturned to the branch that suspended him. An angel hovered behind the man. The door had a padlock which was sliver and shiny and snapped off.

When she opened the door slightly, and the smell of old pickle jars hit her.

She had gasped when she saw its content.

"Oh, my goodness."

They looked so alien, inhuman looking.

There were big glass bottles of foetuses, babies that had died before they were born. Not just human ones, but other animals such as cows and pigs.

Grissom didn't say anything. Even if he had something, he was incapable of speaking.

They were documented.

Sara pointed out the bloodstains and scratches on the inside the door. Sara had wanted to test something. She knelt down in the closet and asked Gil to close the door, locking her in. She noted someone of the height she was at, a child, made the scratches.

There was no door handle on the inside and she couldn't push it open.

She had called out to him.

She looked up to the ceiling, which was a smoke dark grey, rat coloured and it was as silent as death. It was like standing in Madison Avenue in New York, looking up at the slick buildings and glass-covered towers and the pollution that blew along the edge of the clouds in a big, black fat haze. Her knees began to ache on the glittering white torture tiles that felt uncomfortably solid.

When he didn't come back after about thirty seconds, she started knocking on the door, shouting his name. Her knocks had started as a gentle tapping and then a hasten rapping until her palm was being slammed in to the door. The sweat was collecting in circles on her faded lips and her black pupils became swollen. She knew the science part of what was happening to her; her arteries were constricting, core temperature rising, heart racing, the brain firing bursts of electrical impulses, her respiration was becoming rapid and sweat spat out of every gland. However she couldn't understand why she was so upset about being in a small cupboard.

Grissom opened the door, brimming with simplicity.

He cocked his head, not understanding why she was rocking herself backwards and forwards. Her face looked upwards, like the carving in the door and she stumbled to her feet.

He apologised.

"Was that some pathetic attempt of a sick joke?" She was almost in tears. Gil had wondered throughout the night whilst working with her if she had begun drinking again. He toyed with the idea like a baby playing with its hanging mobile suspended above its head. Her face was drained, the bloom gone from her face. She seemed dull and full of shattered visions.

As she stood there, he explained Sofia had called to him. He thought the door would be able to open from the inside.

He apologised again.

Sara stared at him before staggering around him. She walked down the stairs, gloves still on, and opened the front door. If Sofia had been there and tossed her a contemptuous sneer, it would have wounded her far too much.

Sara made her way down the serpentine sliver drive until she estimated she was five meters away from the perimeter of the crime scene and she vomited.

She thought she was losing her guts as her energy rolled out of her like thick waves. It faded and she was shivering. She felt her sickness rising up in her again and half-digested food came out in a small stream. She felt very limp and she heard Grissom's voice.

"I'll just be a minuet." She hoped he hadn't seen her vomit, it would just be another to low she would have to sink to in front of him. She could vision herself in an open grave, mud and tree roots and moisture surrounding her and him looking down, solemn, sombre and staring at her and as she would have to claw at the mud to get to the surface and when she reached the damp, wet grass, her right hand would crush the last flower in the world that poked up seductively from the earth and disappoint him once more.

They were sat in the dark, thick curtains drawn and there was no glimpse of natural light.

The centrepiece of the dining table was a vase crammed with dead flowers, falling petals of red, purple and gold.

Gil could tell that everything in this room was white or was white in the day. Right now it looked as though everything had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. The soft materials seemed withered and clinging to hard sharp surfaces. There was no brightness left in this once bright room.

Sara's elbow was resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand. She was as still was the glass ornaments displayed symmetrical on the shelves. For some reason, when Gil looked at her, he was reminded of a ghastly waxwork he had seen at a Fair when he was a child. He looked at her and saw her peach skin crumbling away, brown hair dissolving to dust, her clothes melting off her shoulders until all that was left, was sick jaundice yellow and unnaturally smooth and shiny surface that formed a skeleton. The skeleton's dark eyes moved and looked at him.

"When I was nine, I used to be more frightened of eggs than I was of blood."

He looked at her, as if she had found a spark of humanity.

"Eggs?"

She nodded.

"I though they were revolting."

She paused, softly smiling. She was telling Grissom about her past, but it was something simple and small and it still had the same level of intimacy, or at least that was what she felt.

"At first, it is just a white and sterile round thing," she drawled out softly, "but then it breaks open and it spills out yellow and clear goo."

She shrugged.

"I don't know, I just thought I was gross."

He nodded faintly and then angled his head, studied her face for a moment

"I used to dislike…"

The shrill of the cell phone interrupted him.

"Grissom."

There was a brief silence.

"Thank you."

Grissom stood up as he ended the call. Sara followed and they walked up the stairs together. It was wide enough to let them walk side by side.

"The substance we found in the glass contains chlorpromazine hydrochloride, also known as Largactil."

Sara stopped on the step, whilst Grissom carried on, her mouth half opened. He shot her a quick glance, but she didn't notice him looking.

"Largactil?"

"Yes. It's an anti-psychotic. The chlorpromazine works by blocking," Sara started moving again, "a variety of receptors in the brain, particularly dopamine receptors."

"Do you know anything about it?"

"No," she said softly

"Oh, just the way you reacted, I thought-."

"Thinking is over-rated," he muttered simply, without bitterness, yet he felt the weight of her words. He didn't say anything. He half turned and looked at her. Gil's eyes narrowed on his back as his confusion grew.

"Something wrong?"

"No."

He was confused by this sudden mood swing. He thought, perhaps it was payback for his mood at the start of shift. They were both caffeine and sleep deprived.

His confusion turned to anger.

"Then stop acting like a child."

"Only if you stop acting…" Gil couldn't hear the end of her sentence, he wasn't sure if he wanted to. A heavy silence fell between them as they stared at each other.

"Do you want me to finish the bathroom, you start on the main bedroom?"

"Yeah, I think that would be a good idea."

They kept very still, his eyes not leaving hers for a second. She pirouetted away from him.

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I hate this chapter so much...it feels...so crap...sorry x 


	11. Drugged to the eyeballs part 1

It was a totally different type of place but just as depressing. The outside was painted dirty egg white and inside was a dirty dull yellow. When I stepped inside, I was asked to take off my black jacket. As I slid down the zip, I felt all protection slip away. I handed it over. All the nurses I had met so far had uniform-looking faces.

The starched cotton shirt and pants grated on my skin as we walked down the corridor. The nurse opened the door and I went blank and stopped dead as a dead baby looking at Liz. Liz standing was outside. I didn't realise it was her at first. The nun had lied to me, though I didn't surprise me, about her going home to help her mother. Her beautiful phoenix fire hair was now a bottle-bleach blond styled like cotton candy fluff. She lit a cigarette and let the smoke flare slowly from her nostrils. After a few puffs she came back in, dressed in a starched cotton top, but underneath she wore a full-length nylon and lace number that was the colour of nothing, just white. You could half see her skinny legs.

I later found out she had taken it from one of the older women on a different ward; she got me one too, a beautiful shiny black that was decorated in black lace and black ribbon. It came down to my feet and I felt almost naked in it.

A nurse bustled me away before I had the chance to say anything to her, but I wiggled my fingers at her. We arrived at the nurses' station. The nurse handed over some papers to a colleague sitting behind big brown desk. I was told to sit in the corner of the room on a chair while the talked for ages. When the other nurse was finished writing something down in a notebook, she led me down a corridor and showed me to a dormitory with about six beds. It was smaller and seemed much nicer than the dormitory at the reformatory school.

After I put my limited possessions in a cabinet besides my bed, the nurse took me to the playroom. When she opened the door the noise was almost deafening. The first thing I noticed was the children were screaming and shouting like wild animals. But somehow the ones that were stewing in their own sweet air whilst staring vacantly at the walls or quietly rocking themselves on the floor, were far more disturbing. Some of them were making funny noises. Others didn't seem to know how to talk. I didn't know what to do but there was a huge sense of relief when I saw Liz and some of the other girls who had gone missing. Liz was now thirteen and she was glamorous.

"I thought you had all gone home."

We were stood casually in corner on the right far side next to the window.

Mary looked at me and laughed.

"You feckin' eejit. Didn't I tell you some of the girls were sent to the asylum?"

Mary, thirteen, just wore the same standard uniform as me and her hair was tied back. Her skin had a bronzy polish. She fiddled dumbly with her straight black hair before flicking back behind her shoulder. She had a lime green barrette and it suited her, with her gold skin and ebony hair.

"Yeah, you did. Why were you sent here?"

"They said I was mad. Needed treatment," she replied.

Doreen joined in. If Liz was Marylyn then Doreen would have to be Garbo.

"You are only sent here if you talk about things you are not supposed too." She held out her hand coolly and Liz handed her an emery board so she could file long, nicotine-yellow nails. She hadn't changed at all. She'd whisper witty sarcastic remarks to me under her breath when we worked for the nuns and she would do the same here about the nurses.

"They say we are mad. Sinners…children of devil…compulsive liars…"

The three of them didn't say a word, just looked at the tiles that made up the floor and they returned to being girls for a moment. I felt so angry; we were being punished. We complained about being abused and we were punished and the priest got to continue his evil ways with other girls, who, if they protested, would end up in a mental hospital like us. We had no voice.

Liz broke the silence, in the only way it could be broken; humour.

"Damn nuns, eh? They should be in here, stupid cows."

Mary told me that if I thought the reformatory school was bad, this place was worse. I shivered.

I then asked what was wrong with all the other girls but they didn't know any more than me. I learned that they weren't insane. Some of them had learning difficulties, others suffered from autism. Some were hyperactive, while others where perfectly normal just like me and Liz and the girls who had come from the reformatory. Many came from troubled backgrounds. A lot of them had been neglected at home. Two or three of them had been caught stealing sweets from the shop.

One girl, I didn't know her name but she was about six, had been out with her mother shopping and she had picked up a stone and threw it. It hit a shop window and broke the glass and that's why she was here. I got friendly with another girl there, Ellen. She was depressed. She told me the only reason she was depressed was because her brother had sexually abused her and her sister for years. It was hard to believe all these girls had been locked up when there was nothing wrong with them. I couldn't stand that no one helped them or even cared.

Life in the hospital soon fell in to a routine. All the children in the unit went to the schoolroom in the morning. I learned nothing in the classroom because the children were always screaming and roaring and fighting. But again, for some reason, I was seen as special, brilliant minded…gifted and I was given work to do outside of the classroom. Every Monday a different book would be placed on my bed. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Joyce, each with there own obscure theme. I'd borrow Liz's lighter so I could read them at night. I half way through 'Finnegans Wake' when I was caught and it was confiscated. Liz got so angry with me; she had become dependant on those white little sticks since she was twelve. It didn't last long as she stole another one.

After my ninth birthday, I was sitting at the table with the other girls talking one evening when a nurse put a little plastic tumbler on the table besides me.

"Drink all that down," she said.

"What is it for?" I asked

"It's good for you, drink it all up."

I put it to my mouth and started to drink but the taste of the thick syrup was too horrible. She made me drink it anyway by holding the tumbler to my mouth. I was nearly sick and the taste lingered for ages.

After a while I began to feel drowsy and I excused myself from the other girls. I couldn't keep my eyes open. I needed to find Liz. I felt my jaw slacken and it just hung. Everything slowed down, my body felt like a sack of potatoes. I felt like I was drunk with fatigue and I marched limply in sleep. It was a huge effort to breathe.

When I awoke, I was staring at the ceiling and I thought what an odd texture it was. It was white and had a crack running across it. I didn't know how I had got here from the hall and I stayed still for a few minuets on my coffin shaped bed. Eventually I swung to my feet and balanced dizzily. I made my way the playroom.

"That was two days ago, you really can't remember anything." Liz was brushing my hair. She loved playing with it. I didn't think it was that special. I shuck my head and I looked at the clock. According to Liz I had been asleep for over a day. She told me that she had seen me slumped against the corridor wall and I had toppled in to her arms. I still felt half asleep.

"I bet they gave you Largactil." Doreen raised her eyebrows, the perked up over the large black sunglasses which made her look like she had eyes like a wasp. She was sat opposite me, legs crossed.

"What's Largactil?"

"Makes you go all dopey." I found out it was used to treat schizophrenia and mania and since I was neither I assumed that they were just using me as a guinea pig.

I got a glass of Largactil in the morning with my breakfast, at midday and in the evening. I began to sleep in school, in the playroom and I walked up and down in the corridors in stupor, like many of the other patients. Everything started to take place in slow motion. Ordinary things like lifting a cup, getting in to bed or going to the toilet became a burden and my vision was hazy. Sometimes Liz fed me, as I couldn't even lift the spoon to my red mouth. I wandered around half-dead. It was a horrible state to be in.

After about five months I got used to the stuff, it was like drinking water. I must have become immune to the drugs effects because it no longer made me drowsy. It good to get some energy back after all that time floating around in a twilight zone. I started to feel a bit better. I tried to escape in to the field that was behind the window at any opportunity.

A nurse would notice that I and either Mary or Doreen were missing and would bring us back inside. Liz hardly ever came with us. That's when the punishments really started. Liz was right when she had warned me that things here were even worse than at the school; she was always right.

Our punishment was being sent to bed for two days. We were supervised for each of the twenty-four hours that make up the day. The tumblers of Largactil stopped. They gave it to us by injection instead. It made it so much more powerful. When we were finally allowed to get back up and go to school, I wasn't in class for five minuets when a nurse came in for me. The psychiatrist, who was in charge of the children's unit, wanted to see me.

I went into the office and she told me I was to go back to bed. I started to cry and said no, and then I ran out of the office and ran back to the classroom. Two nurses then came in to the classroom and dragged me out, kicking and screaming. The other children went quiet and I could see, even thought I was struggling, that they were frightened. Liz moved to get out of her chair but the teacher told her to sit back down.

They took me to the nurses' station and gave me an injection. I was in bed for three more days and every time I woke up I was given another injection. Then one day the doctor told me to go with the nurse, as I was to have a test done. She took me to a room down the corridor. I had to sit outside on a chair. There were lots of people. Some of the patients were going in and out of the room on trolleys, shouting and screaming. There were black straps across their knees and chests, holding them down. Others just walked in, while the male nurses dragged some in. Everyone was brought out again on a trolley looking like a zombie. It was like nothing I had ever seen before and I began to shake all over because I knew something awful happening behind that door. I thought that they were all going in for operations but it turned out to be electric shock treatment.


	12. Drugged to the eyeballs part 2

**Disclaimer:** I don't any of the characters from CSI, just the ones I make up.

_**Thank you**_ so much to anyone who has read this story and thank youso much those who took the time to let me know what you think and thats just utterly lovely so big thank you to **_The Magic Bringer, icklebitodd,_** **_Cherrydrops12, dark-girl-faith-sidle, pigeonofdoom_** **_and Dybdahl_** for taking the time to let me know what they think of this story and for just letting me know it was okay because I was a bit worried so thank you! x x x x x

**The Magic Bringer**- thank you for reading and reviewing thank you thank you thank you xxxxx

**icklebitodd-** heya thank for leaving a really long review, again, they are fab and you just really nice things so thank you again. I am glad I am keeping your intrest. I am actually wondering how 'deeply' it will affect her because I am worried that I might gotoo far and make it stupid, hope that makes sense. anyway thank you again xxxxxx

**pigeonofdoom-** thank you for reviewing.TWICE! wahoo! Thank you sooo much for reassuring me and for reviewing again xxxxx

**Cherrydrops12**- I love your 'I…' thank you xxxx

**Dybdahl-** thank you for reviewing again … it means loads…xxx….Sara is like a like a humpty dumpty toy (oooh egg analogy) that you can just break over and over but reversed so she can get back together again…hopefully…hmmm… xx

**dark-girl-faith-sidle**- thank you for reviewing the last chapter, its mint that you take the time.I have been reading about the ECT and its sounds like it hurt alot...thank you xxxx

x

* * *

My eyelids were closed but I could see lights flashing, my sight was crackling with blue light. Whatever I was lying on was cold and hard. My left hand would stop shaking. I found it hilarious, I had no control of my left hand. 

"What did you do to her?"

Although I was still drowsy, Liz's voice was distinguishable.

"What did you do to her?" she screamed.

No one answered her. I felt a release across my chest and I was being lowered on to the bed, like a casket in to the ground. I didn't like that I was thinking, because if I was still thinking, I was still alive. Liz kept shouting at them. Someone told her to calm down otherwise she would be medicated. I listened to Liz's voice. She was close to tears and they would fly out of her eyes just like the sobs flying out of her throat.

"She is just a kid." She stayed quiet. The door shut and we were left in darkness.

"Come on, Sar', come on. Wake up."

She tossed me about a few times, shaking me, sitting me up, my head lulling forward.

"Stop it." I moaned.

She sunk in to a marble calm when she heard me. I heard her rummage for something, followed by two spit sounds and her lighter enflamed. It was that moment that made me think'I want a lighter' so I could be like her, she carried it everywhere.

"Sar'?"

"What?" She wrapped the bed blanket around me as if I was a baby.

"What did they do to you?"

I didn't feel like talking or breathing.

"I had to lie down on a bed and a man put a…"

My head was swimming. I felt like laughing for some reason.

"He put something in my mouth." I rubbed my neck as my throat felt as thought I had been guttering, choking, drowning. My hand worked its way to my lips and cheeks.

"My mouth feels fat. Is it fat?"

She giggled and stroked my hair.

"No, it's normal size."

I asked her to lay me down.

"So what else happened?"

"The man put a head strap on and then he gave me in an injection. I don't remember what happened after that." Liz told me the things she had heard about what went on in that room. I was happy that I was asleep for it. I thought it must be the worst thing in the world, to be burned alive. I was so tired and drowsy that I just stayed in bed for next two days. Liz brought me my food and would make sure I looked clean and pretty. When I got better and was allowed up again, they kept giving me more orange juice, as I called it. It was more Largactil.

* * *

Doreen disappeared and I missed her. I got friendly with an older girl whose family didn't live that far from where my uncle Oliver and Auntie Annie lived. She had been in the hospital for years and had become immune to the drugs. Jane Halland…she used to drink up my medicine for me and we thought it was hilarious. I would pass my little plastic glasses to her to drink and we did this for a few weeks until we got caught by one of the male nurses. He reported up the psychiatrist and our punishment was being put back on the injections and confined to bed for three days. It was a return to the twilight and everything to slow motion. I was a young girl being transformed into an old bedridden woman. I was out of it I had to be helped to the toilet. I kept falling asleep and waking up with a fright because I had forgotten where I was and did not know what was going on. 

A new girl came, Emma. She twelve and was lovely and had a speech impediment. Sometimes it was hard to understand what she was saying and she would become agitated but that seemed to be the only thing that might have led her to being sent away. She had great green pebble eyes and big teeth with a broad smile. She was pure, good and sweet. However, Emma became seriously ill and I used to go to her room and sit with her. She was pale, tired looking and thin. It was as if her spirit had been crushed that her body just broke down. There were probably more things she suffered from that I did not know about. Eventually I went in to her room one day and her bed was empty. Emma was gone. When I asked the nurse where Emma was, she said that she had died. I cried for weeks afterwards. I never knew how she died and I was never told. When I asked again, I was told to forget about her, but I never did.

* * *

We stood at the crotch of the tree in the rain. An apple plopped to the ground at my feet. It was wrinkled and black. I was ill with indecision; I had swamped with thoughts for a few days but I could not focus on a single thing. I was drowning in my confusion, and there is no one there to lead me—not even a stuck-up and closed mindedperson like Andrew. 

"Can I have one?" I asked.

Andrew was a complete philistine, 'a prick with no prick' Mary called him, who mocked me for reading literature. He had a slight sweaty smell. He was always grave and tentative but he became even more so when I asked him.

"Now why would I do that?" He took a deep drag and I thought the orange glow was pretty because it reminded me of Christmas lights. I think he already knew my age or he could guess it. I guessed he was about nineteen. I desperate to copy the older girls and would have done anything to release the boredom in that place.

He looked around and passed me it.

I took my first puff. It was so disgusting that I started to cough and retch and a jet of brown vomit flew from my mouth and landed at his feet.

That stopped him from laughing. I thought that would have put me off from smoking for the rest of my life but I started again in my twenties.

* * *

I had been counting my needlebruises for over three hours when I realised my memory was shot. Since the visit to the 'shocks room' I had begun to forget things.They were beautiful colours, bruises; blues, purples, greens and yellows. Blue indicated a more recent jab, where as yellow meant it was administered while ago. I used to look away as the needle pressured the skin and I would wince but recently I had developed a fasination of watching. The nurses didn't like it but I found it wonderful, the way the needle just sank in to the flesh and the plunger was pressed down. It was magical. I asked if I could try it. The answer was no. 

A girl, Frida, came and sat besides me. She had lots of scar bracelets up and down her arms. Her hands were so white, it looked like the skin had worn away from all that washing of her hands.

"You bin doin' that for the past three hours."

"So?" I continued poking my bruises, but I kept losing count. It was annoying me. I was finally losing my mind and I hated it.

"Arn't you gettin' bored?"

I looked away from my bruises and up at her face, which grinned gawkly at me.

"Go away."

She went away and I smiled stiffly. I looked at my arms again and sighed. I started counting again.

* * *

I remember seeing my mother for the first time since the incident at the reformatory. I was sat in the corner of the playroom; it was early morning so most of the children were still eating breakfast.

I was in a cocoon-like silence; someone was moaning, and I felt the cool winds sweep across the floor. A tear was half way down my cheek when the nurse came in.

"Sidle."

I heard her voice and what she said and I remember thinking, 'what an odd name.' I thought it must belong to a boy and then I processed the idea of being called Sue Sidle and thought it was funny.

I just sat there numbly. As soon as I woke up I knew I was going to be in a low mood that day. I was thinking about the different ways I could die. I thought about walking out in to the middle of a lake but decided that the water could be too cold. I considered the possibility of hanging myself but there was nowhere inside that I could hang a noose from. I couldn't cut myself because I didn't like the colour of blood. I thought about sneaking in to the kitchen and creating a mixture of raw egg and raw bacon and gorging on it to make myself sick.

"Hey, Sidle." The nurse clapped her hands and I was forced to blink and look upwards. "You have a visitor." I told herI didn't want a visitor but she told me I was talking nonsense.I was taken in to a monochromatic beige room, with boring green plants room that was stinking of lime air freshener. The room had icily air-conditioning and windowless. This was the room that smelled like lies. I looked like it should not have belonged to the hospital.It wastoo nice.

My momwas stood alone, no police officer or men in white suits, just her with her blond her pinned up and in a baby blue flowing dress. She turned around and she became distraught, her little girl stick-thin and drugged up to the eyeballs.

"What happened to my beautiful little girl?" she cried out. I was out of it that I could tell she was upset but it all seemed to be happening far away from me. I tried to reassure her, saying, but I just slurred my words, making her more upset.

"Sorry, Mom." I lazily pushed her away.I hated her seeing me like this. I think I was finally broken. I couldn't get myself to react to her presence in a positive way.

"Sara?" Titanic tears formed in her pretty eyes.

"Just go away." I mumbled as I moved away from her.

Her face turned in to a stark, blank sky and she moved towards me, grasping my elbow.

"Just…" I couldn't think of anything else to say. "Just piss off!"

Her peach satin skin turned in to the colour of a loved one's ashes and I evaporated from the room like a dream.

* * *

The daily doses of Largactil continued and the gave me so much that one time during the summer when we were all out in the field for the whole day, I got so sunburned that I could hardly walk. The pain in my feet and was unbearable. I had blisters under my eyes. I looked like someone who had boiling water poured all over them and I will never forget the pain. My skin peeled off my legs and it took nearly three weeks to clear. 

When I got better I planned to run away. I wasn't going to stay there any longer. I went in to the playroom one day, and the window was wide open. I climbed out and ran as fast as I could down through the big field, out the gate and down the road. I didn't look back or think about where I was going; all I cared about was getting away from that place. I didn't mind where I ended up. I ran for what seemed a long time, but I didn't get very far. I went in to a garden of the first house I saw. At the bottom of the garden there was a large tree. I climbed up the tree and just sat there. I had been there for quite a long time when a woman came in to the garden. She stood beside the tree and I looked down at her. She smiled at me and I smiled back.

"Well, I never thought I would find a little girl in my tree. Can you come down and we will go in the house and tea and cookies?" she said. I was so delighted, not only was I having tea and cookies, I created a fantasy that she would let me stay with her forever. She sat me down at a table in the kitchen and made the tea. Then two girls in to the kitchen.

"These are my two girls," she said.

I was really happy. Not only had this nice woman rescued me and taken me in to her house but was also giving me two new friends. We all had the tea and talked. She never asked me where I came from or how I got there. Afterwards I helped wash the dishes. What I didn't know that while I was washing the dishes she was calling the hospital to get someone to pick me up.

I didn't know how she had worked out where I was from, as I didn't tell her. Maybe she had found runaways in her garden before. The nurses, one male and one female, arrived in a little white van and I was taken back to the children's unit. I was ordered to bed and was there for two days, with medication to keep me doped up so I would not runaway again. I was back to the slow motion state.

* * *

Thank you for reading x 


	13. Drugged to the eyeballs part 3

After I ran away, the staff began to give me other things. I was told they were tablets for depression, to help me sleep and to calm me down. They were tablets to 'take the edge off the way I was feeling.' I was not mad. There was never anything wrong with me. I was just reacting. I was angry and upset. I had been sexually abused and I had been beaten, battered and bruised for years.

One day I was to have tablets to keep me up and the next day I would have tablets to keep me down. It was like being in a sweet factory, though the pills were not one bit sweet.

Things were happening around me and I could have no part in them. People were there but I could not reach or touch them. The drugs made me feel like I was floating on the ceiling and when I was asleep my dreams were full of demons and voices. Whilst I was awake, I was paralysed by tiredness that me indifferent about whether I lived or died. I would cry for myself and for Mary and for Liz and Doreen, wherever she was, and for dead Emma. Why were there nowhere for us to go?

It sunk in a few weeks later what I had said to my mother, and I cried for her. She was lovely and I loved her so much. I wanted to be in her arms, to be hugged and to be held close.

I lost Liz. August twenty-third. I couldn't find her. She was gone.

September came and it was the first weekend of the month when I was called for. I stumbled down the corridor and realised again how much hated this place, permeated with the smell of stale urine and disinfectant and drugs.

There was a new psychiatrist. She was funny and bubbly. Most of the kids liked her and she was good to us. Mary told me not to trust her and since her and Liz had been right at most things, I didn't. But I knew she was good. I liked her.

One Monday morning, there was a new arrival. He was twelve years old and he had come from another home. His name was Johnny and he was wild and funny. He became close friends with me and Mary and we stuck together as a little group.

About a month later, someone broke into the shop in the hospital. It was a little shop that the older patients would use to buy their cigarettes and newspapers and sweets from. For some reason Mary and I got blamed. We didn't do it. Nobody would listen to us. The head nurse said, "We know you did it so you might as well confess. You will be punished anyway."

We said we didn't do it but she was convinced we were responsible. Johnny was accused too, because he was found with some sweets in his pocket.

"Off you go," she said. "We will see how you like going down to work at the gate for a few days."

Mary looked at me.

"We didn't do it," I said quickly. "We didn't go near that shop. It's not fair. And I didn't take anything from it."

Johnny got called in and was told he would work down at the gate.

"I don't mind working."

The nurse said something threatening, telling us next time we won't be so eager to lie to her and we left.

* * *

We werein the laundry room and we were sat on the white machines. 

"I am going," I said.

"I am going with you," agreed Mary.

Johnny looked at us both before saying, "I'm not going with you. You two can go on your own."

"Well, we are not working at the gate. You can if you want," I said.

"What will we have to do? Clean up and sweep. I don't mind doing that. I did it back on our farm."

I just looked at him blankly as Mary said, "You lived in a farm?"

He nodded and started to answer but I butted in telling him he had no idea what working on the gate meant.

He just shrugged his shoulders as if to make out he was big and hard.

I started to explain to him what would happen.

"You go down to the thing that looks like a big shed. The male nurse goes with you to open the big steel door. You go and sometimes there's some one lying in there."

"So?" Johnny said.

"So…" I held on to the 's' making it sound sharp. "It's the morgue. How would you like it when you have to wash and dress the people even though they are dead?" I raised my eyebrow at him.

There was silence.

And then he said, "I'm going with youse two."

We climbed out of the laundry room window and ran down the backfield. When we got to the end of the field we sat in the grass and Mary and I started to laugh. We were rolling around in the grass laughing in ecstasy at the thought of Johnny changing his mind. He was the first one out of the window.

"You bitches," he said. "I knew you were only joking."

"We're not."

"Then what are you laughing at?"

Mary told him, "We are laughing at you because when we told you what was at the gate you were out of the window right away."

"You really aren't joking then."

"We're not," Mary said. "First time down there, Sara wet herself."

It was true. The morgue was a dark building surrounded by trees. Inside there were five slabs where the bodies were laid out before they were taken away. I was sent there with Doreen and a girl called Jessica. She had raven hair and she was the personification of sleek. I was made to wash the body of an old woman with a bucket of water and a cloth. I was so scared of the white, cold and stiff woman that I peed myself and then again when I heard the steel door slamming as the nurse locked us in. we ran to the door and banged and screamed until he came back.

For days I could not get that dead woman out of my mind. I had seen my father's body, but it was just different. I kept picturing her there lying still, not breathing and yet I expected her to jump up at any second and come after us. Her eyelids were closed. I had never seen skin so pale or so taut. It was drawn tightly over her cheekbones and almost transparent. Her sliver hair was long and tied in a bun. Her face had a noble look; everything about her character was written there. She looked like an old Indian squaw that I had seen in a picture book. What was most striking about her was the lack of movement. It was the stillness that screamed.

"So did you." I continued. "And sometimes they lock you in and leave you there for hours. Isn't that right, Mary?"

"Yeah, I remember Liz was sent there once will Molly and Mol's went mad because the nurse locked her in and she was left over night. They had to give her the needle to calm her down."

After we told Johnny the story, we decided to move on and went over the wall and we walked for ages and then we sat up on a big wall next to a bus stop. We had been chatting for some time before a police car pulled up and two men got out. It was like Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dee. Policeman Plod and Policeman Prat.

"What are you three doing out here?"

"We're waiting for the bus so we can go home," I said, smiling.

The taller of the two men then asked us were we had come from.

"My Aunt's," I told him.

"How are you getting home?" he asked.

"On the bus." I said, again smiling. If it was any one else I would have been sarcastic. If we were sat at a bus stop, how else were we going to get home?

"Where do you live?" He was really starting to annoy me. I didn't know where we were but Mary answered him.

"Are you sure you haven't runaway?"

The three of us said, in perfect unison, "No."

"I think you have. We got a call from the hospital up the road saying that three children were missing. Two girls and a boy. Aged thirteen, twelve and ten."

I was shocked. I was ten. I hadn't realised.

"I think that's you three. Down you get and we'll get this sorted out."

We got down. Before I followed Johnny and Mary in to the car, I took one last long look at the road that stretched out.

"I know what you're thinking, missy. Don't even think about it."

Mary and I had to be interviewed by a fat, tall officer with a china plate face, mustard hair and beetroot cheeks and dirty, congealing olives for eyes. Johnny got a separate interview.

I was bored. I let Mary answer most of the questions; until P.C. Jolly and Plod Policeman asked me something directly.

"Do they do any bad things to you, Sara, or do they touch you?"

"How do you mean bad things?" I asked.

I was drawing a repetitive figure of eight on the grey table with my index finger.

I knew what they meant but I didn't want to say anything. So far in my life, whenever I told the truth about had happened to me, it just landed me in a deeper circle of hell, so I figured it was safer to lie.

"Well, do they put their hands up your clothes?"

It had happened once.

"No, they don't."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Yes."

"Okay, then someone will collect you shortly."

He left. Mary looked at me, with evil eyes.

"What did you do that for? They were going to help us."

"Don't be stupid, Mary. They don't give a damn."

I left it there and I didn't speak to her for twenty minutes. I would have been longer, except I was passed out. The doctor and nurse had come and they give us an injection in the neck, which made me so dopey.

I got another one the next day.

I loved it.

It gave me ease.

It made me feel very calm and I felt like was floating.

It made me feel so defenceless and safe at the same time, like everything was going on around you and you were powerless to do anything about it, but it didn't matter.

I found out it was 'ketamine'.

* * *

x 


	14. Drugged to the eyeballs part 4

_**Hey everyone**_…I am having issues with the ff because it's not letting me upload things but now its all good…and I am getting a bit meh about the story and I feel like crap because at the start I was like 'nope, not gonna give up or get bored' and there are stories on ff with like, 100+ chapters …anyway I am starting to wonder how it's all going to end and when I start thinking about it…there is a wall because I have never really done an ending before so if anyone has any suggestions, they would be cool… the next chapter will be up at the weekend for definite (_it will be the onethat is back at the crimescene_)and it will be the last chapter for until the 14th because I am away wooooooo….lots of pretty sun away from all the rain that's been going on for days…anyway I'll stop going on now… Thank you again to everyone who just checks out the story, it's been fantastic the response and it's just more than I thought it would be when I started so thank so much.

Thank you so much to **_Dybdahl, The Magic Bringer, CSI-Fanatic-CSI, Shellster, Ally-617-luv-tv , Jenn, pigeonofdoom fugimermaid, sparklin-strawberries and dark-girl-faith-sidle_** for taking the time to leave reviews…thank you xxxx

**Shellster**- Hey thank you for taking the time for reviewing…I'm not a Catholic though but it's always good to wondering xxxxx

**The Magic Bringer** – Hi, glad your are reviewing me again, its great, thank you sooooo much. xxxxxx

**Fugimermaid** hiya and awww thank you… I am planning to stick with this one…I am not planning to get bored with it yet so that's plus…hmmm maybe about the gsr fans being all happy and bouncy and sugared up…there could be gs moments but a lack of 'r' in those moments…I like my daily doses of pain…meh…anyway after that weird little ramble, thank you for reviewing, I so grateful…Thank you xxxxx

**Pigeonofdoom **heya, thanks for leaving two reviews and very bleh indeed. I actually worked in a morgue for a few weeks when I was 15 and it is so scary and so freaky and I remember the "freezer" door opening and thinking, "OMG those feet are really white" which was actually really disrespectable now that I think about it…so that's were that little bit came from…thanks again xxxxx

**Dybdahl-** Hey, thank you for letting me know about chapter 10 and it will be fixed within the week…thank you x…there probably should be a lot more control in a mental hospital but it can be a low budget funding place that's totally rundown…I got my thoughts of what a mental hospital is like from watching 'one flew over the cuckoos nest' and that seems pretty relaxed on there…xxxxx

**dark-girl-faith-sidle **hiya waves glad you like…thanks for two fab reviews, that's just wicked…I am running out of drugs now, I am like "Largactil, ketamine... ermmmmm" so I think I am going to have to leave out the drugs now, find some other things mess/destroy Sara evil laugh

**Ally-617-luv-tv-** hi, stupid sight lol, thanks for leaving a wonderful review The present day chapter is next and should be up at the weekend …xxxxx

**sparklin-strawberries- **hey thank you for reviewing, I know that my spelling and grammer and punctuality is totally messed., my English teacher always gets mental when I hand my work in and it's always been like that…I would love to have a beta reader and I'd be so grateful, so thank you xxxxxxxx

thanks for reading

luvs n hugs

x

* * *

One night I drifting the corridors along and I found the front desk. They never locked the doors, I was told it made the other patients nervous. 

I was wandering because there was a violent storm and for once my system was drug free and my senses ran wildly. The lightning was so bright that every time it struck, it had lit up the dorm and the night brighter than the sun, making everything the light touched look faded and bleached. The thunder cracked so loud it reminded me of the horrid black belt. I had tried to sleep but the storm had started near midnight, after many people had already gone to sleep. I was stood on my bed watching out of the window I could see the lightning cracking down over the land in streaks like unnaturally bony fingers sprawling outward as if they were trying to grab everything in its pathway, then, almost the moment the lightning was over, the thunder would boom.

The woman at the desk looked bored, like so many people in the institution. She looked about forty, forty-five. Her legs were crossed and she wore brown shoes with long heels. Her hair was glossy and brown. Her shirt was ivory with pearly buttons and she had a silky scarf around her neck. She was staring up, her spider eyelashes crawling up to her finely plucked eyebrows. There was a pen in her mouth. She was very still and I wanted to pick up a boot and throw it at her, just to see if she blinked.

"Hi."

After a few seconds, she realised she wasn't alone. She looked at me and pulled the pen out of her mouth and smiled.

"Hi there, sweetie."

I learned that her name was Ester Browning. I showed her the wristband with my name on. I hated the plastic wrist cuff; I hated it because I felt it had branded me like cattle.

"What are you doing up at this hour?" She asked gently as if she was trying to keep me calm. I wondered if she would be pressing a button on her desk that was letting the doctors know a patient was loose, a psycho ten-year-old on the rampage. No one came though.

"I couldn't sleep. The storm was keeping me up."

I told her that mother would sit with me in my bed until I fell asleep. I talked about my mother for a long time, what she looked like, what she liked to do and memories I had of her and Ester listened to everything. At least I think she did.

Ester eventually excused herself and moved away from the desk and in to the room behind her. She came back with a file in her hand and dialled a number and passed me the phone.

It was my mother.

I was unable to speak at first when I heard my mother's tired voice. My eyes must have gone as wide as dinner plates. I didn't know how I was able to speak but I managed to squeak out something. My mom asked me how I was and if I was being good. I told her how much I missed her and how much I wanted to come home. I asked her about my brothers. She told me that Adam was still in prison and she got a letter from Nick a few days ago. She read it to me. She told me she got a new, small house with blue shutters and small garden where she could grow herbs and vegetables. She told me that she was going to grow vegetables and lots of different flowers. She spoke of Auntie Annie and her boys and how big they had got. It must have broken her heart but it meant the world to me to be able to talk to her.

I would return to Ester Browning often on the nights I couldn't sleep and I made a good relationship with her. She often told me that I was too pale and skinny.

"Just look at you," she'd say. "I am going to take you home with me and fatten you up, I am."

* * *

It was Christmas and Johnny, Mary and I were sat on the kitchen floor. We had been locked in and forgotten about. It was our punishment to clean the kitchen, until the nurse who had ordered us to do it could see herself in the surface. I wondered why she would want to see her face on the surface; she was very ugly. 

We weren't actually cleaning and we had misbehaved on purpose. While the other patients could eat purified turkey and mushed up vegetables and a small sample of cake, we were eating cold chicken, anchovy paste and bread and butter with sour cream, ginger snaps and chocolate and marzipan fruits and grape fruit juice and ginger ale.

The sight of all the food spread out around us made me dizzy, I hadn't seen so much exotic food in one place.

It was Mary's idea initially but Johnny had developed it. Mary was wearing her pink nightdress that curved in at her middle and the bulged out again over her bum and stopped above her knees. She wore her uniform white pants underneath thought to keep her legs warm. Her hair was still perfectly straight. I was wearing my black nightgown and like her, my mental institution pants. Johnny had combed his hair and his uniform seemed less crumbled.

My eyes were like the glass facets of a diamond, I was so happy.

"Just think if this place wasn't here," Johnny said, "then we would be washing dead bodies." He reached for his plastic cup of pink liquid.

"But it is here," Mary pointed out, her mouth half full.

I couldn't stand the idea of scrubbing down the dead on Christmas Eve.

Mary looked at me, "Sara, slow down…try and chew your food."

I had been cramming my mouth with food, as if I was trying make myself choke on the food or as if someone would take the food away if we didn't quick enough. I stuffed my mouth with a bread roll that oozed with the paste and sour cream. I had spread it thickly like peanut butter and wrapped it around a piece of chicken.

I was happy where I was, but Johnny had an idea.

"We could burn it down. The gate."

I gulped down avariciously the juice I had in my mouth and looked at Mary.

"I have matches," Johnny said. He plucked them out from his pants and waved them in the air.

Mary hugged Johnny, thinking it was a brilliant idea.

I was dubious but I didn't say anything but I felt like calling him a moron. I didn't like the idea of being an arsonist but I found myself climbing out of the window following them.

There was a big empty bird's nest on the edge of the roof, so Johnny climbed up the drainpipe. I was watching him whilst my arms were wrapped around my stomach. I got no sympathy from Mary. I felt very sick as if my stomach was being beaten with a wooden spoon.

The nest didn't really catch fire at first. There was a lot of smoke coming out of it.

We stood there, dead and serious, watching it smoulder until flames started to arise.

I was lost in the dancing flames, licks of gold and amber and ruby melting together to create a blurry haze.

I realised I was crying and I couldn't stop. It was a relief that salt tears were pouring down my cheeks because I knew that I still had something human prowling around in me.

Mary took my left hand and Johnny took my right and we stood watching the flames crawl up the north side of the morgue.

I was sick at some point.

Eventually, some of the nurses came outside and they started screaming. It wasn't that big of a fire and we didn't burn down the entire building as we had hoped. We were taken back to the unit and we had to admit it was us who had done it. We were sent to our beds and the next morning we were sent for.

We were in the office. The psychiatrist was there with two nurses and a male Doctor.

They had a good scream at us. She was angrier with Johnny, she combusted at the sight of him.

"You are going to a place you won't get out of," she screeched to Johnny. "And where you will learn to do what you are told."

She looked at us.

"You two, get out and go back to the playroom. I will deal with you later."

We left the office and Johnny went to follow us but she said, "Not you, Johnny. You will stay here until it is time for you to leave."

We thought it was just a threat and he would be sent to bed with a needle.

Mary and I weren't escorted out of the office, so we hid behind a corner.

We were there for ages.

I fell asleep against Mary but awoken by screaming and a digging sensation in my hip.

Mary and I flicked our heads around the corner. Mary and I ran down the corridor.

Two men had Johnny by the arms and they were pulling him, kicking and screaming.

Mary and I were shouting things, random things and apologies but our words just became noise. They just kept dragging Johnny away. He was crying and waving to us and me and Mary just stood there.

We kept shouting to him, things I can't remember but he shouted to us that he would never forgot us

Neither Mary nor I ever saw Johnny again or found out where he went that day.

Two days later, the doctor told Mary that she was going out for the day. The nurse took her away in the afternoon and she never came back. When I asked where she was, the doctor said, "She's gone to a place where she will do what she is told."

I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I watched the small girl with the lanky arms and a dirty white shirt and blunt brown hair staring at me. I knew it was my reflection but it felt like I was just hovering two inches to the left of myself. The small girl's face withered with grief and she placed her hands in front of her mouth to block a sob.

I turned the sliver tap and a gush of hot water came tumbling and spurting out, creating soft bubbles as it hit the sink. I placed my right hand underneath the scorching water and kept it there, the heat burning away at my skin, turning it bright pink. I picked up the white and used oval-shaped bar of soap with my left hand. I placed the soap in between my hands and squeezed it and watched the foam and froth seep out between the cracks in my closed hands. I suddenly realised how repulsive the soap was, as many other hands that crawled with germs must have already touched it. I dropped to bar and it sloshed around the sink bowl. I scrubbed my left palm up and down my index finger and then repeated the same motion on my middle, ring and little finger. I pressed my left thumb in to my fingerprints and then scraped my thumb away. I rubbed my palms together and smeared my wrists against each other.

* * *

A week went by and then I was sent for. I went to the office. She told me that I was been sent to a special school. 

"Special?"

"Yes, You don't belong here, Sara. There is clearly nothing wrong with you and your teachers have noticed you intellect and we feel it should be nurtured."

"Why can't I just go home?" I asked.

I never got an answer and although I hated been stuck in the nuthouse, I was also scared about going somewhere new. I wasn't given any choice. I got ready and I was taken to the office carrying a black case that contained my things. I noticed that I actually got most of Liz's possessions and I wondered why she had not taken them herself. I was given another uniform; a sleeveless smoke grey dress that came down to my knees, a white blouse to go underneath the dress, white socks, a sliver cross and my black, cracked patent leather shoes.

One of the nurses, the nice ones, from the unit had been instructed to go with me on the trip. There was a black taxi waiting for us outside the front door and I got into it clutching my black case.

* * *

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	15. Chapter 4

Heya

I AM SO SORRY. I am very sorry for not updating sooner… it has been…two months? I am so sorry. It started out with me thinking…hmmm what type of school is it going to be…and I was like…hmmm either gifted snotty girl academy or evil gifted snotty girl academy and then I started reading about American education on wikipedia and I just didn't understand it (That makes me feel quiet pissed off because I really tried but it said stuff like 'there are 4 gpa but there can be a fifth one' and I was just like I can't understand this….any way now I do) so then I was like okay, should I go through the teenage years or should I skip this part and start after Berkley…so I started writing the part after berkely and then I thought 'no, I need to explain about the foster care, working in Chuckie Cheese, ect' so then I started writing that bit… and then I returned to college and life got in the way blah blah blah and anyway it's sorted now so here's the next chapter and the next chapter will be up tonight because it's almost finished but I have to go to college (I have to travel on a bus for I and a half hours just to go to a class which is only an hour and a half long…how much does that suck…) any later days xxx

BIG BIG thanks you's to **Cherrydrops12, crzygrl, forensicsgirl97, MC New York, icklebitodd, Lindsey, Shellster, dark-girl-faith-sidle and Lyanna Stark** for reviewing. THANK YOU. x x x x x x x x x x x x

**dark-girl-faith-sidle** Heya, Glad you love. Hope this is good too… The reason everyone get taken away is because I don't know what to do with the characters…well that's half the reason… the other reason I just like taking them away. Anyway thanks for the comments xxxxx

**Lyanna Stark** hey there. I'm thinking I'd rather write some good rather than some more bad so there will defiantly be some happiness… I am not going to give up, I think I was just in a mini moment of panic but I'm defiantly not giving up, I love writing this I am looking forward to getting to the end but not in a way that its like, "oh thank goodness it's over" but in a way like "ooh I have finished a story" xxxx

**forensicsgirl97** Hey Happiness is defiantly coming (like I haven't said that before) within the next few chapters…well more happiness than there has been…more sadness then more sadness but this will be "black" rather than the blues and then the end which I think will be "peaceful"…could be bad "peaceful" though

**Icklebitodd** hi glad you liked… twisty-ness will come xxxxxxx

**MC New York** Oh my god… when I looked in my inbox I was like, "no way…something must have gone wrong" but nope and I was like "yaaaaaaaaay" I laughed so many times when reading your reviews…particually is metal spoon and rubber ducky… lol-ing make me happy… Glad you are loving it in a non-sadistic way…you could love it in a sadistic way too if you wanted.Oh I LOVE BURNING THINGS… science class turned me in to a little arsonist with all the Bunsen burners and the matches…mmmm matches… Two OC's are coming back…aha! One is back next chapter and is going to be sticking around for the rest of the story. The other is back in later…Hmmm, boarding school hmmmm I was going to use it if I couldn't think of anything else (which I couldn't but I really didn't want to do boarding school and so I didn't…) One of my friends goes to one and she HATES it…hate isn't a strong enough word actually. Oh, you have an evil cop too! Mine is called "Gary" and he is like a little werid beady eyed rat snake …I don't actually think he is a real cop…he is a "community service" guy or something …Prepping corpses are so not fun…But it's quite…I can't think of a word that is a cross between scary and calming and disappointing…I know that's a bit of a weird combination but that's what it feels like...for me anyway… "I originally thought that Sara would've woke up and realized it was a dream." When I read that I was like hmmm… I could do I twisty end…and have the final chapter in the mental hospital and Sara had never left and created CSI land in her head…and then I thought maybe not…better keep it real. Its fun making Sara crazy…or it was … moved on…for now… I would like to work for you in the business of torturing people but I am already occupied much more "fun" job. Oh damn… Oooh you noticed the hands…yay… Sorry for my poor grammer…well check over work better before adding it to the story. I won't make things too bitter between Grissom and Sara…but am seriously considering the the idea of having someone jumping sofia...evil laugh Any thank you for all the reviews xxxxxxxxx

Grissom was stood up and Sara was sat down.

The latex covered fingers fumbled through the pine bedside cabinets. It was clear which side belonged to the female and the male of the house. Sara, sat crossed legged, worked at the side that was decorated with pink and vanilla church candles and a small bowl of dead, crushed flowers in a brown pot in its drawer. There were photos stored, and a blank diary. There was a manicure kit with one of the sharp implements missing. A nail file was recovered from Grissom's side of the bed, stained with blood. A soiled condom was also found and blood droplets running all over the carpet.

Sara straightened her spine and tilted her head to watch Gil working for a few seconds. On the bedside he worked at, there was a silver alarm clock and a masculine watch. It was plain and sterile. She watched the big capable hands that could perform the most delicate tasks.

She didn't realise she half-smiling, her lips pink and peachy, pastel coloured and her eyes were soft, glistening like opals. She watched the blunt ended fingers with clean fingernails hiding beneath a sheath of plastic. He turned his head looking across to her, over the bed and as a smile tugged at Grissom lips briefly. Her brown eyes dragged themselves on to the dull, repetitive pattern on the bed's top cover and she twisted her head away. He did the same.

"Why did you bring Catherine on to this case?"

Grissom's lips twitched. Sara thought that she heard him sigh, but wasn't sure. Grissom looked over to Sara expecting to make eye contact, but she was looking at something else.

"Catherine is good at dealing with children and I needed someone at the hospital to collect evidence. One of us had to be with that little girl and I wanted you here."

She stared hard at the eggshell coloured wall, grim and unsmiling, and rose to her feet. She probably wouldn't want to be around any children anyway.

"So why didn't you go?" Sara's voice became hard and clear as a diamond.

"Catherine has a connection with children. She's the 'mom' remember."

Sara thought for a moment, she remembered, and then nodded. They continued to process calm and detached, the tension and the rattling of their movements filled the space.

"Catherine's outside," Gil stated. "I gotta go."

* * *

Gil and Catherine were sat in the front of the Denali, it was their sanctuary for private conversation; they had detached themselves from the world and in the car was there own solitary universe.

"She cares."

The expression of Catherine's face conveyed grandeur and severity. Her fashion had changed; she was dressed as the antithesis of bling. She wore dark grey suit. The jacket gave her a clean silhouette, streamlined and sexy. The sobering clashes of the brittle red vest top against the grey were dynamic. She was a pink-crimson lipped, towering blonde and her appearance would let the world know she was brave and authoritive but firmly feminine. Catherine was a modern woman; she was crisp and fit for a purpose, not boring and corporate.

"She enjoys feeling guilty."

The two fine lines that could have been drawn with gold India ink, arched up over her blue eyes.

Catherine's lips parted as she drew in a breath and turned her head to look at him, her smoothly combed golden hair moving fluidly.

"Are you being intentionally dense?" Her tone was funny and serious. Catherine gave it the full wide-eyed innocent routine and Grissom smiled a little in spite of himself, lips twitching as he peered over the rims of his glasses.

"What have you got for me, Catherine?"

She handed her first file to Gil, pursed smiled, so he could quickly browse through.

"Alannah Bailey, age 10."

Gil picked up the first photo. It was just a portrait of the Alannah. She looked infinitely frail and delicate, her head tilted on her slender neck. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, making them look strangely elongated. Her brown eyes were almond-shaped. The hospital gown made her look washed-out.

"She had a physical examination and psych evaluation," Catherine continued to narrate as Gil flickered through photographs. "She is covered in bruises and on her hands there are first-degree burns. Everything is documented. The shrink said that when she arrived at the hospital, she was catatonic but she was…she was okay when I was there. She just seemed like a normal, little girl."

"Was she checked for sexual abuse?"

Grissom thought he had seen Catherine flinched at his words.

"Yes. I recovered fresh semen in her hair."

"Have Wendy compare it to the Mr Bailey's DNA and the sample I sent over which was taken from the child's bed covers."

Catherine paused as she had a sudden thought and her face seemed to cave in with disgust.

"Incest?"

"Maybe."

"How long have you been at the scene for now?"

Gil answered.

"You had a break?"

Gil nodded once.

"What you think happened?" Grissom stayed pensive faced, his eyes focusing on the grey tarmac of the road until Catherine interrupted his empty thoughts by saying his first name. He lethargically turned his head slowly.

"I don't really want to say until we have everything."

Catherine made a noise, a hybrid sound, a cross between a snort and a sigh.

They sat in silence.

"You should get back to your crime-scene." Catherine's voice was mild and soft.

"Is autopsy still backlogged?"

"Yeah. Pile-up on Boulder Highway. Robbins said he or David would call-." Catherine wiggled her hand to her purse and removed her ringing cell phone. She held up her phone and identified her caller. David.

"How do you know that?"

"Caller I.D. You don't have it?"

"No." Gil stepped out of the vehicle as Catherine answered her phone.

* * *

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	16. Junk part 1

I was really stuck for a title on this one..Ah well... This part is only a three parter. It's not going to be really dramatic or anything...maybe a little weird...meh... The second part will be up on friday. Maybe thursday. Thanks for reading xxx

* * *

I hated the eighties; the fashion, the music, the politics, the philosophies. It felt naff and dated even then.

After my time in the asylum I was sent to a middle school. Well, a finishing school that was dressed up as an academy for young, intelligent girls. A perfect ruse. I thought it was a place for tomorrow's leaders, not their wives. Too much independence frightened them. They were traditionalists.

When I asked how it was being paid for, as my own mother could not have afforded to pay for tuition, the only answer I got was, "A benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous."

I stayed there until I was fourteen. I had grown sick of changing for them. I knew I would always be the daughter of a violent man and a murderer and the sister to a drug user and runaway and no amount of speech, poise and allocution lessons would change that.

On the third of April, 1987, I was placed in my final foster home and I stayed there for just over a year. It was shitty, conventional town that was surrounded by a dull and rural landscape. It was about a three-hour journey away from San Francisco.

I was labelled an outcast and a freak at high school. I kept my head down and melted in to the classroom scene. But for some reason, I still seemed to stand out. I spent my breaks in the library, pouring over books about weakly interactive massive particles and the superstring theory whilst eating sandwiches deprived of their crusts; my carer couldn't understand that I was a teenager and treated me like a child. Or perhaps she treated me like a normal teenager and I was too old for my age.

After school, I worked in a café.

Today was my sixteenth birthday. It wasn't anything special, except that I had got older.

I walked in to the staff room. It was a dull room with ochre walls and lima bean green plastic tiles for the floor. It had a dishevelled plant that was deprived of flowers, water and sunlight, a floral sofa and a couple of cabinets, an array of lockers, a coffee maker, a faded silver sink and several polka dot mugs.

"Hi Gwen."

Gwen was sat on the mouldy sofa, lacing up her white sports shoes. She looked up at me, her pink lips stretching on her face. She always cheered me up immensely and most days I needed cheering up. She had neat red hair that was always twisted up. She wore gold earrings that belonged to her grandmother. She was the head waitress at 'Joe's Café.' I never knew why it was called 'Joe's' because there was no one there called Joe and the person that owned the café was called Larry. I was a waitress and I worked there on weekends and after school. I wore a faded white uniform.

"Hi, Sugar. Happy Birthday."

"Thanks," I brushed it of casually as I opened my locker. I kept a mirror in there. My new hair made my look like a moonchild gazing out of a mass of mascara.

I had recently cut my brown hair off; the guy who sat behind me in physics kept calling me brownie-locks and pulling my hair. Now bottom of my bleach blond hair just managed to reach the top of my shoulders. I had a hacked half of it off with a pair of rust covered scissors but then my carer shoved her way through the bathroom door, breaking the lock. She probably thought I was slashing away at my skin but looked hilariously horrified at the sight of my locks on the floor.

I tucked my hair behind my ears and the thirty-two thin and multi-coloured bangles on my right arm slipped down to my elbow.

"You coming off shift?" I already knew the answer but I was being polite.

"Yeah, I gotta get home to my pig of a husband and my little girls."

I kept insisting that she just packed up her bags and take her girls far, far away. He was a lazy, pot-smoking alcoholic who about once a month got a kick out of giving Gwen a smack across the face; a hard smack that left a mark on her face for about a week.

"How is your Ma doin'?"

Gwen was referring to Mrs Alison Raine, my most recent foster mother. Alison Raine was married to Thomas Raine and since they couldn't have their own children, they fostered. Alison had dull black hair that was always carelessly brushed back, longish and often looked so dry you would have thought it was a wig. She had sharp colourless eyes and a heavy mouth. There were several pathetic freckles on her skin that was so delicate that the faintest touches left pink marks.

However, I had seen my own mother the previous weekend. I was allowed to see her once every two weeks with my social worker present. My mother had developed a reputation for being fearsome and spiky but recently I had seen her grow in confidence to let her guard down. She had felt that her docile and gentile softness had been her weakness, the reason she had been beaten down and so she shielded her it with a frosty hauteur. She has become quite a still person, self-composed. Her blonde curly hair is worn pushed away from her make-up free face that is constantly pale and pretty but not as striking as she used to be.

"She's fine."

"And your brothers? Are they staying outta trouble?"

Gwen was referring to the boys currently staying at the Foster Home; Jimmy, Frank and Eric. I was the only girl there.

My own brothers, Adam and Nick were not staying out of trouble.

Adam, now twenty-six, had been placed in a mental institution for certain unsavoury reasons. He had to either commit himself for at least twelve months or be placed in prison for another eighteen months. He was certified insane and had all sort of tests done, tried to escape countless times, assaulted male doctors and male nurses, he hated the male nurses and threatened all of them with legal action and assignation.

He eventually quietened down and no longer tried to escape. However, at the time, I was sure he was trying to lull his keepers in to a strong and false sense of security.

It was whilst he was in the institution that I got my first phone call from him and since then he called me every two days.

It annoyed me that Adam went crazy.

I hadn't seen him since I was a child but I had a vision of him in my head. Actually I have two visions of him. Both visions were of him being tall and slim, though slightly stooped. His face delicate and slightly androgynous and his eyes were dark. But that's where the similarities end. One version had Adam finding his way in the world with all his intelligence and brightness and sensitivity still behind him. I remember him telling me once that he wanted to be an artist and share his creativity with the world.

I know that his brightness is still in him but in vision number two, the path that was chosen for him destroyed him. The years of abuse and neglect in his family home and foster care made him turn to small oval shaped pills and sharp, sliver needles, which eventually consumed him. It had changed him in to quiet a different person. I loved him, despite the alteration though and there was still a feeling of wanting to protect him.

Nick, almost twenty, was living in Oxnard and had married to a sweet girl called Bonnie Cleavers. A squealing, pink baby would be wriggling in their arms in about a month. I didn't really have much contact with him but my mother would bring him in to our conversations from time to time.

* * *

I only had a few hours until I came of shift. It wasn't a busy night. There was a withered old man in one booth that had only ordered a bowl of soup and several cups of coffee and a couple of teenagers swapping saliva. I sighed and I walked up to the booth that held the teenagers.

"What can I get you?"

"I'll have a cola," the girl said. Her fashion was clearly inspired by Madonna. She had gloves made of black net, black bracelets and black and white beaded necklaces.

"Richie what are you having?"

'Richie' reached in to his pocket and he dumped some change onto the table. It was mostly pennies, a few nickels and dimes, no quarters.

"What can I get with this?"

"Some pie. I think there's some peach pie. I can't there guarantee will be any peach in it." I smiled weakly and realised the girl was staring at me. I thought I recognised her from somewhere. I bet if I wiped away all the make-up, it could have been someone from high school.

"Hey, do I know you from somewhere?" she asked.

"I don't think so," I mumbled quietly.

"Okay, 'Tracy.'" I briefly looked at my nametag pinned to my top. My boss had bothered to make me a nametag so I had to use one that belonged to a former employee.

"I'll go get your pie."

* * *

It was nine o'clock and I was being followed.

"Tracy?"

I was being followed the girl from the diner. I had tried to lose her several times. I didn't want to be bothered.

"Tracy?" she called louder. I just walked faster, pretending not to hear. I just wanted to be alone.

"Sara?"

I stopped, illuminated by the streetlight and she stood in front of me.

"I knew it was you. Underneath that horrid hair and all the make-up. Look at you. Sara's all grown up."

"Mary?"

"Yes, you feckin' eejit."

We stood for a moment, both of us looking sad, tired and dishevelled. For a long moment we just looked at each other without saying a word. Then we step slowly hugged each other close for a long, tight embrace.

"Hey, do you have any money?" Mary said, and we pulled apart and I gave her a surprise look.

"I didn't mean that like... Well, I just mean... I know this place with this guy. We could go. I mean… I could show you if you had... 'Cause I'm broke."

"I am in foster care."

"Oh. Well, that's cool. I'll see you then." And she walked away, clattering in her high heels.

* * *

"Hey, I'm home," I shouted. I turned to Mary and whispered, "Go up the stairs, second door on the right."

I walked in to the kitchen. Thomas and Jimmy were sat at the kitchen table playing a card game. Eric was already in bed and since Frank isolated himself from the world after eight, he would be up in the bedroom he shared with Jimmy.

"Hey guys."

"Hello, Sara. How was school?" Thomas asked. Jimmy sat in silence, ignoring me.

"Sucked, but thank you for asking. Can I get some food?" I leaned against the green kitchen cabinet. Thomas peered over his round spectacles.

"You can get whatever you want. You live here too."

I walked to the fridge and grabbed several items, stuffing them in to my school bag.

"Where's Alison?" I asked.

"She probably fell asleep in the living room."

"Okay."

"Goodnight then."

"Goodnight Sara."

* * *

Dull rain spattered against the window. The rain was not a bi-product of a dramatic thunderstorm, but a relentless torpor of dismal weather. Mary and I were on my bed. She was stretched lazily across it whilst I sat with my legs crossed. There was a dreadful and painful silence of unspoken emotions that weighed heavily. We stared around the room as if we were looking at sluggish goldfish in an aquarium.

Mary had wiped off all her make-up and removed her mass of beads and plastic jewels. Her ebony hair was tucked behind her ears. Mary hadn't changed at all, physically anyway.

She was in awe of my room. It wasn't that brilliant. I had my clothes hanging up around the room. My dressing table was covered in empty glass perfume bottles and snow domes and several sets of nesting dolls that were carefully painted and lined up in descending order. I had an electric blue and silver duvet cover. I had several candles glowing and they smelled musky and sweet.

We mutely decided to leave our joint history alone for the night and we were in the middle of a conversation of music when Thomas knocked on my door. Mary stuffed her slim body under my bed before I told Thomas he could enter.

"Sara, you have a phone call."

"Okay, I'll pick it up here. Thank you."

Thomas smiled and left.

I plugged in my beautiful, plastic turquoise phone.

"Hello?" I asked.

"Sara! Sara! It's me. Me! Hello there! Hello!"

I recognised his voice.

"Is there an echo or are you just repeating everything." I said. Mary wriggled out from underneath my bed like a snake.

"Both," and he laughed manically.

I wouldn't make him angry tonight. I wouldn't want him to wreak another piece of public property.

"Hello Adam."

Mary gave me a confused look. She didn't know who Adam was.

He had been released a week ago and I had received no contact from him.

"Hello Sara."

"Where are you?" I asked.

"I am here. Where are you?"

"Here."

"If we are both here then why are we bothering with the phone?"

"Tell me where you are before your money runs out."

"But if you are here you must know. Don't you know where you are?" He started to giggle.

I said calmly, "Stop being silly, Adam."

"I'm not telling you were I am. Your owner is probably still on the other line. And she will notify the police and then they will have me sent off back to the fucking hospital."

"Don't use four-letter words. You know I don't like them."

" 'Fucking' is not a four-letter word. It is a seven letter-word. How are you anyway?"

"I'm fine. You?"

"Mad of course," he said indignantly and I had to smile.

"Are you going to see Mom? If you are, please don't burn any dogs."

Mary's mouth contorted in to a large oval shape, the corners of her eyes creasing slightly.

"What are you talking about? It's me. Adam. I don't burn dogs!" He started to shout, gasping and spluttering.

"I don't burn fucking dogs! What do you think I am? Don't accuse me of burning dogs. You little bastard! Bastard!"

"All right, Adam. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," I said as quickly as I could. "I just want you to be okay and careful. People are sensitive, not like us. So don't antagonise them."

I heard him mutter something. I just listened to him breathing.

"I am only coming back for a short while." His voice had softened. "I am coming to find you."  
"I am looking forward to seeing you."

There was a pause.

"Well I'll hang up now. See you. Take care."

"You take care."

"What's to worry about? I'll be all right. What can happen to me?"

"Just don't do anything to annoy people. They get angry…about pets especially. I mean…I'm not-."

"What? What? What was that about pets?" he shouted.

"Nothing! I was just saying-."

"You little shit!" he screamed. "You are accusing me of burning dogs again, aren't you? And I suppose I stick worms and maggots in to kids mouths and piss on them, too, eh?"

"Well," I said carefully as my fingers toyed with the flex. "Now you mention it-."

"Bitch. You little shit. I'll kill you. You-."

His voice disappeared as his money ran out and I put the phone back in its cradle.

"Dogs!" Mary exclaimed. " Burning dogs!"

"Yeah," I said and laughed nervously.


	17. Junk Part 2

**Disclaimer:** I don't any of the characters from CSI

Hello... sorry it is a late...again...but this is the last part of 'junk'... it was just a connecting one really...Only a decade and a half to go on the 'Sara Sidle' story... I watched a bit of 'toe tags' and i saw the scene between sara and grissom 'when we first met' and I actually swore at the screen because it meant I had to go change some things. meh... Oh and this chapter is based on the information about Sara from wikipedia so...you know...oh and sorry about any 'american education' things i got wrong.. I really tried to understand it...x

Anyway thank you for reading and any reviews/comments left will be really valued...

thank you soooo much to **Lyanna Stark, Dybdahl and MC New York** for rewiewing.. it meant load and loads

Lyanna Stark...heya thanks for reviewing. sorry for the lack of updating and I will not be stopping until the end...thank you xx

Dybdahl... yep..hi..i.'m back...with lots of the following chapters pretty written so no more big gaps of blankness...yay... thank for reviewing xxx

MC New York heya sorry that this isn't a really long reply…thank you for reviewing both chapters…

Someone jump her in Chapter 5….have some psycho just go on a chainsaw hacking spree - calls MISTER KRUEGER, MISTER MYERS!! mmm…fire… I was actually playing with fire to day…good fun was had…Liz or Johnny will be returning…Mary is sticking around but is more of a semi-background person.

Though, I won't deny that I would've liked to see Sara in such a prissy little surrounding and knock one of the uppity girls right on their ass for degrading her in some form- I do like this….i think I might to use it somewhere before the end…

Officer Bitches-lol

Thanks for reviewing xxxx

Hope you enjoy, next chapter will be up on sunday (I have presentation i need to work on for eye fopr stupid key skills eyes turn to evils I hate key skills but we have to do them so the college gets more money..)

x

* * *

It was the start of October and I was bored of the chatter about Halloween costumes from the girls and the boastfulness of the boys of how many things that had done.

I had been requested, much to my dismay, to stay behind by the new physics teacher, Miss Ellen Morrison.

She looked ridiculous but very wise. Today she was wearing a suit jacket over a lilac blouse and a full skirt that was gathered at the waist by a wide black patent leather belt. A set of stylish crescent-shaped spectacles was perched on her nose. Her eyes were a cool deep-sea shade. I thought her skin must be stiff like parchment because I had never seen her thick and pink lips smile or frown. She had pinned imitation lilacs in her knotted and twisted up hair.

She waited until the students filed out of the door before asking me to come sit at the front. She asked if I minded if she had a drink. She offered me one but I declined.

I wondered what she wanted to talk to about. I wondered if she had noticed my blankness in class and had interpreted it as being unintelligent.

She leaned back in to her padded chintz-flowered chair and said to me, "You don't fit in here do you?"

"I don't come to school to fit in. I come here to be educated."

Her face twisted in to a quick smile, which half shocked me, and she reached for a pink, plastic folder. Her fingers flittered through several papers and documents. I sat up a little straighter to see what she was looking for. She pulled out a document and passed it to me.

"Here is the exam from last week."

I was disgusted at the red ink strokes. I snorted.

"You gave me a B."

"I was being generous."

She bent her cup of water to her mouth, never taking her eyes of me as I flipped through my examination, quickly reading over my black barbed wire letters and my mind shut like a clam. I couldn't understand why I had failed.

"I gave you a different exam to other students. "

It was practice S.A.T examination.

"In my class you show outstanding intellectual rigor and I bet in all your lessons, your work exemplifies the highest standard of academic excellence."

I blushed and I lost the eye contact with her as my eyes swivelled to her desk. There were several things scattered about. I noticed a brown folder with 'S. Sidle' printed on it in the top right-hand corner.

"Is that my file?" I was growing interested in spite of myself. "What's it say?"

"Well, let's see." She opened it, her long fingers the folder out.

"You attended St. Francis's Elementary School. Your middle school was The Academy of Science and Mathematics followed by a list high schools that you have attended. Do you move around a lot?"

"I used too," I said dryly.

"It also says you have straight A's."

"Until now."

"President of the Physics society; captain of the girl's lacrosse team; co-captain of the tennis club; member of the Bio-Chemistry club, Jujitsu." Ellen Morrison paused. "Seems like you would rather be at here rather than be anywhere else."

I felt weird, sort of airy and light.

"What are you going to do after high school?" she said mildly.

What I always dreamed about. I had in mind getting some big scholarship to a fancy college or university and then a getting a grant to study all over the world, and I'd be a professor and write books with my own theories or write a book about a book on theories and prove everything to be wrong. Or right. I usually had these plans on the tip of my tongue.

"I don't really know," I heard myself say. I guess after everything, my luck just seemed to be bad and therefore there would no chance for me of getting in to the places I wanted to be, no matter how many ladders and cracks in the pavement I avoided.

"Which college are you going go to?" she assumed.

"I hadn't thought about that." I said hollowly.

"Why not?"

"Well, when I graduate, I'm just going to work."

I realised that I had been subconsciously been shifting throughout the conversation and my pressed my nails in to the backs of my hands.

"And then?"

"And then I'll be working."

She pressed her fingers together, the tips going white.

"Just for fun, if you could go to any college, which would it be?"

I didn't need to think about it.

"Harvard. Does that count? It is classed as a university but-."

"Why?"

"Well, I think it would be a freeing experience because I think I would finally feel as though I would be among my equals."

I smiled and said, "And because it had one of the worlds largest libaries."

She licked her lips, tilted her head and her eyes creased softly in the corners.

"But you haven't really thought about it."

I shuck my head and she reeled in to a speech about me consider doing Advanced Placement courses. I already knew what one was but she told me that they would be a replacement for the typical required courses but they are intended to be the equivalent of the first year of college courses and that by doing the A.P, it would enable me to graduate early.

I stood up, summoning any authority that was left in my bones.

"Look, just because I don't want to go to college doesn't make me any less smart. By not going it doesn't mean that I have no depth, no intellect, no interests."

She stood up too; I was only about an inch and a half shorter than her.

"Your future is right on the horizon and I can't understand why you don't want to go to college and reach your potential."

I picked my bag and swung it over my shoulder.

"The horizon is an imaginary line that recedes as you approach it." I gave her a coy, quick and bitchy smile. "I would have thought you would have known that."

And I left.

* * *

"Sara! Phone!" Alison shouted. 

I was laying on my back in the unstable tree house. It had no windows but one large rectangle hole that always made me afraid that if I got too near its mouth I would be spat out on to the grass, weeds and mud. The hole could be covered up with an old brown sack that had been nailed to the top of the frame.

It was my place of solitude and the boys weren't allowed to enter. There was always a waxy smell. I had a ritual whenever I would enter, I would take up the tin that held the matches and lit the candles that burned yellowly and I would kneel, clenching my hands thinking.

Then, if it was a night, I created a compound of weed-killer and sugar and lit it, making it sizzle and glare.

After that, I could do what I wanted.

Today I had found in a candle, a wasps head poking out of the wax prison. The newly lit candle, blood red and as thick as my wrist, contained a still flame and the tiny head within its caldera of wax like the pieces of an alien. As I watched, the flame, an inch behind the wasp's wax-gummed head, freed the antenna from the grease and then came upright from a while before they frazzled. The head started to smoke as the wax dribbled off it, then the fumes caught light and the wasp body, a second flame with in the crater, flickered and crackled as the fire incinerated the insect from the head down until it was a blistered debris floating in a clear pool.

I had thought about everything today as the candle lights danced on my retina. The conversation with Miss Ellen Morrison had triggered off several things in my mind.

If… if I were to go to college a few years early…graduate as valedictorian at age of sixteen… ace my exams…then maybe I could have something in my life that I wanted. I could end up steering my life as if it were my own private car and not bumping around from one place to the next, like a numb trolley bus. After so many years, maybe I would finally be able to react to life.

For so long I had felt very still, very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.

"Sara! There is a gentleman on the phone for you."

Gentleman, as if. Actually, several times when he was on the junk, he had been polite and well mannered.

I threw the core of my apple over the fence; it plopped into the mud with a satisfying slurp. I climbed down the tree and ran up to my room, to the phone. It was hidden under Mary's jacket.

It had only taken Adam several miniets to get me raising my voice.

"Look, you mad man!" I shouted in to the green plastic as I gripped it hard and it sent spears of pain up in to my arm.

"I am getting fed up with you calling me and being deliberately awkward."

I felt my face contort.

"Stop playing games with me. Just stop trying to mess with me, okay?" I gasped from breath.

"Sure, Sara," Adam said, uninterested.

"Well," I started to shout again but I controlled myself and quietened down. "Well…just…just don't do that to me. I'm your sister and I was only asking where you were."

"Yeah, okay Sara. I understand," Adam said carelessly.

"So what did you do today?"

"Made something out of an old chainsaw, some spoons and a duck. That was annoying. They duck didn't stay still and the blood got everywhere and it was just a mess."

I could believe he just said that, he was the only person I knew could say something like that without expressing any emotion. I realised there was a lack of a crackling static echo and I asked him, "Are you in a call box?"

"No. I am in somebody's house."

The way he said it would have made anybody who didn't know him think he was being sarcastic.

"What? Whose?" I said.

"I don't know." I could almost hear him shrug. "If you want I could find out for you if you are really that interested."

"No…it doesn't matter."

"Look, Sara," he said tiredly, "It's just someone's holiday house or weekend retreat place or something. I don't know who's it is but like you said, it doesn't matter."

"You've broken in to someone's house?"

"Yeah, so what? Well I didn't have to break in; there was a key under the flowerpot. It's a nice place."

"Aren't you frightened of being caught?"

"Not really. I've got food and there's a shower and a bed and a massive fridge-freezer thing. You could fit a Labrador in there."

"A Labrador?"I screeched.

"Yes. Well, if I had one. I don't but if I did I could have kept it in there, I suppose."

I closed my eyes.

"My teacher thinks I should go to college."

"Oh."

"She thinks that I could do it a few years early."

I waited for him to say some something but he remained silent.

"She thinks that because I do lots of things and know lots of things, she thinks that I could go somewhere. She thinks-."

"She, she, she," he said like a child's nursery rhyme. "How about what you think, Sara?"

* * *

I was looking through my notes. My final role was as the last speaker at the graduation ceremony. I didn't see why being first in the class made a difference to my GPA and ACT and SAT scores. 

My speech, it was actually written for me, held the common themes, wishing the graduates well in the "real world," that there's no dress rehearsal, no take-home tests, no rough drafts, followed by a cautioning that the world of academe is a special place where they were taught to turn thought in to a fluent knowledge.

Probably being a valedictorian didn't make a lot of difference in the grand scheme of things.

I thought of all my successes I had gained in the last few years and yet they seemed to add up and fade to nothing.

* * *

x 


End file.
